


Nothing Ventured

by pyrites



Series: Pharos By Right [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (Just some tasteful fade to black!), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst and Humor, Archivist Gerard Keay, Autistic Jon, BPD Tim, Cane user Jon, Chekhov's Werther's, EDS Gerry, EDS Jon, First Kiss, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Getting Together, HoH Tim, Implied Sexual Content, Jewish Adelard, Jewish Jon, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, OCD Jon, POTS Gerry, Trans Sasha James
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 60,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrites/pseuds/pyrites
Summary: It catches on itself like a birthright. It burns inward.Gertrude Robinson’s desk chair is not the throne Gerard Keay was told he was in line for.It sort of hurts his back.
Relationships: Adelard Dekker & Gerard Keay, Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Gerard Keay & Michael | The Distortion, Gerard Keay/Tim Stoker, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Series: Pharos By Right [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933000
Comments: 282
Kudos: 223
Collections: GerryTitan verse





	1. CANDORSTEEP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack** : [we can build a fire - autoheart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rPxwKO9FWA)
> 
> endless thanks to ren @[titanfalling](https://titanfalling.tumblr.com/), without whom this series would NOT be what it's going to be. my entire server, honestly, thank you guys! everyone else, get ready for one fuck of a rollercoaster.
> 
> **CWs in the end notes!**

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

_Almost peaceful, until._

_Until the airshatter screech, the thousand foxes in acidmetal clawtraps type of screaming. Until the creaking wooden collapse, the whole trees coming down like mowed grass type of felling. Until the pain, the back-of-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat type of blinding, except the baseball bat is covered with bloodwet skin or matted featherfur or something else just not right. Sticks in his hair. Pulls it over his shoulder when he falls forward enough to get out of its way. When he palms the ground and feels the bitter brittlecold of winter leaves and soil hurting badly for rain unfrozen._

_It could have been peaceful if not for the reason he was in the heart of the forest at all. If this screaming bloodwet not-right thing wasn’t precisely what he knew Gertrude had hoped to find. Fire could kill it, she told him. Before it killed many more else._

_A summer morning of orangeburst comes alive in the dark and dies again. Foxcrying again, more forest collapse as the beast thrashes away from the jetstream of live flame that Gertrude is sending out from a device she has to hold with both hands to keep steady._

_Someone tells him to get up and move, so he does. He has to catch up to her, set a fire from the back. He should have brought something more than what he could fit in his pockets. He had hoped they wouldn’t find it._

_The trees fade like water and the sky opens up as a clamshell, innumerable useless pearls dangling above and casting no light down. No firebright to help them, to kill this thing all at once, to rain hell down upon it and save the woods and all that’s left in it alive. Just Gertrude with her flamethrower and Gerard with his spinning head, jackhammer pulse cracking holes into his sternum. When the scream in the air is suddenly hers, the rest of his body is frightened awake. Jackhammer jumpstarts into_ come apart later; not now.

_Don’t know what a tackle could do, but it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t land. It hears him running up behind it and turns to face him with open jaws, with a howling, hot breath like exhaust fumes stoked with burning viscera. Don’t know what grabbing onto those fist-length fangs could do but get him bitten, but his hands close around them anyway and twist. Wrenches with his whole body like spinning the wheel of a car, hopes it’ll twist with him before it remembers to close its mouth and stop snarling._

_He keeps his hands. He knows because they catch him when he’s thrown back to the ground, this time on brown grass and needlerocks._

_His jacket had gotten him through the thicket but now it only gets him caught under a talon, digging through the leather and into the earth to pin him like a tent pole as he tries to crawl away. Drags him backwards until he folds, rolls, turns onto his back in time to catch a face full of bloody froth falling from its happy, violent, shadow of a mouth._

_Someone remembers the knife he carries and he finds it in his hand. It’s better lost in the roof of the steamsoaking mouth than in brittlecold leafsoil, unused and forgotten. The hilt sticks down like an ingrown fang, none of its metal glinting in the no-light from the unhelpful stars that watch and know and do nothing, nothing for him._

_The mouth stays open. The beast seethes and breathes and arches up and away from him in agony, its gnarled wings beating feverish. In pain, it can only conceive its pain. In pain, it’s just another animal in want of relief._

_What it is gifted with instead is a stream of lighter fluid straight down its convulsing throat, between the terrible teeth, on whatever surrounds it like a face that cannot be fully perceived in the dark. It’s no easier to see wreathed in flame as a lighter is jammed up underneath its tongue, pulled down like a paintstroke onto its chin. Bloodwet featherfur does the rest of the work on its own._

_It catches on itself like a birthright. It burns inward._

_The screaming flees. Foxcry and forestfall fade backwards like a disappearing ship on a black horizon, out of his line of sight while his eyes are fixed on the stars. No light pollution out here. He waits for the glow of a wildfire to disrupt the sky, and it doesn’t come. Must have fallen before it hit the treeline. Peaceful again, almost._

_The last he’d heard from her was an outcry. Through the night comes nothing else._

_Someone stands up and it isn’t Gertrude, so it must be him. Someone scans the clearing and finds a ledge, and Gerard doesn’t want to walk up to the lip of it. Doesn’t want to look down and over, doesn’t want to see her crooked on the rocks with wet darkness pooling around her head in the thin snow, but he does. It’s not that far a drop. It doesn’t take that much._

_He can slide it. His boots have enough grip to slow his descent, but he still scrapes on the way down and his hands are still grimy and dusty and sick with chemical when he reaches for her, which can’t be good but there’s nowhere to make himself clean enough to tend wounds._

_She’s still alive, but one of her eyes is lost to a mess of gore, too bloody to fully see the depth of the clawcarving. The one still there is too full of blood for her to see him, surely, but she looks right at him when she says something about her phone, the number six. Hold it and wait for the sound of her name and nothing else, and then explain where they are. Explain that in the End, she needs him to come find her on the cliffside and keep his word._

_No paramedics? No police? Mountain rangers? No point. She would never want them. She knows what she wants. Even as her jaw falters around her instructions, red bubbling at the corner of her mouth to drip along her cheek, underlining her earlobe. It freckles the snow in pinholes._

_She won’t make it long enough to see who she’s asking for. She says it herself, says so many more words than Gerard thinks she should be able to with this much iron slipping backwards down her throat._

_“He can help,” she says, breathes bloodhot mist out into the sky. “He’ll take care of me.”_

_Uncharacteristically sentimental. Gerard supposes he can understand it, considering she’s dying and all. He doesn’t have the means to help her, he’s not prepared. She wasn’t prepared. It’s very wrong, somehow, that she was so unprepared. Even if they had a better first aid kit on hand, she’s lost too much blood. This isn’t a sterile field, she’s got broken bones (too many that he knows the names of, too many to list off without sickness), his arm is wounded and he remembers all of a sudden that he’d dragged it back along teethteethteeth after setting the butane-bathed tongue on fire._

_“Listen to me.” He hears the words, at least. “It isn’t done. Make sure it goes to the right person.”_

_Someone asks her what she means, but Gerard knows. Someone reaches out for her hand and she grips it back tightly, like she never has, probably doesn’t even want to. Reflex. Gertrude Robinson is reduced now to reflex and spasm and sputter, and he’s the only thing near enough to grab a hold of. To keep her here a moment longer. She settles for him, and he doesn’t deny her that._

_And then she dies and doesn’t say anything else and he’s left alone on the ledge in the dark with her bleeding brokenboned body and the only task he knows he can complete is making that call. Gerard doesn’t fully remember making it but he registers Gertrude’s name in warm greeting, and then two words before the man on the other end of the line hangs up._

_“Hold tight.”_

_Gerard sits back against the plane of rock behind him and puts distance between himself and Gertrude and he doesn’t know how much time passes but he knows he doesn’t fall asleep. Not on purpose, not gently, but in little snatches of_ gone _thrown into his face like black sand, his heart spitting out blood like emptying a belt of gunshells into the cavity of his chest. It’s the temperature. It’s the empty water bottle. It’s the fear and loathing and alone, so alone._

_He watches the sky, counts unhelpful useless pearlstars and wishes for a BB gun to take them out one by one, knock them down and watch them shatter and scatter and stop. He listens for the sound of animal breath, a pawprint curious in the frostblood haloed around Gertrude’s head. He has to swat away scavengers if they come. Thinks he does it once._

_Otherwise, they’re isolated enough on this little ledge that it could almost feel like a safe place to be if it hadn’t just claimed her life. She could have lived without an eye, maybe, but not without the back of her skull intact. Not without her spine in line, her lungs untorn, her everything unruptured and functional. Never safe, not in her, but usable. Strong._

_A figure stops in front of him in broad daylight, patient and stone. Gerard looks up in what he thinks might be awe if he could see straight, if there was no frost sticking his lashes together. The man’s face is shrouded with his back to the sun, but his shadow is solid. He doesn’t look any more dressed for the January wilderness than Gerard is._

_Still, his jacket comes off and settles around Gerard’s trembling shoulders instead. His voice is low when he says, “Dammit, boy, you’re turning blue.” Lower when he says, “Thank you for calling me.”_

_No one says anything back, and the man crosses over to Gertrude’s side to sink slowly, one knee at a time. Gerard is struck with the feeling that he is witnessing something very private as he watches the man touch his fingers to his mouth before he settles a dark hand upon stained silver hair, whispering in what must be Hebrew. There’s something wrong with his hand. Gerard can’t see from here._

_Nowhere else to look, though. Nothing else to see. Stars are gone. It’s Gerard’s turn to watch, and know, and maybe never really understand._

_Gerard doesn’t recall leaving the cold forest. Only has a faint idea of who supported Gertrude’s shoulders when they hauled her from the ledge, and who held her boots. Doesn’t recall Adelard saying where he was taking her, or when he announced that his name was Adelard. When he said something about ‘sitting shemira,’ how even though Gertrude never needed it, it was almost nice to see it done. Gerard couldn’t recite the rest if commanded._

_What he does remember is the warm blast of heat through the vents in a big van, the hamsa swinging from the rearview mirror. The gnarled disfigurement of three of Adelard’s right fingers, all but welded together as he tapped his hands on steering wheel. Not the radio, but way he hummed along with it. Gerard remembers the short-lived bustle of Adelard going through the sparse items still left on Gertrude’s side of the motel room after being let inside. The sting of alcohol, the press of tape. The relief of no longer bleeding._

_“London can wait a few days,” Adelard says from the doorway. There is a piece of paper on the side table, an address in red ink. “You take your time. I’ll take care of her now.”_

Knuckles rap on dark wood. 

Gerry flinches, his head slipping from the cradle of his hands. His eyes protest the strain as they hook onto swirling, fractaled blue, a tall figure blocking the light from the open doorway behind. Buzzing brightness pulls itself around the silhouette’s edges in persistent rays. Gerry’s head throbs.

Nothing to be afraid of, though.

“Sorry, hi.” He winces at the sound of his own voice, too loud in his mouth and wrecked with disuse. “You’ve been trying to get my attention for ages, haven’t you?”

“Might not say _ages,”_ contests the voice. Subdued enough not to hurt so badly. “But there was a minute there you didn’t seem to hear me.”

Arms fold together to cross in front of him. Gerry forces his eyes up to squint up at an angular face. The shadows in the room sharpen Tim’s cheekbones, sink his eyes away into nothing. Hard to tell if it’s just the lighting, or broken vision.

Gerry knows irritation when it looms over him, though. He fails to wet his lips before he speaks.

“Sorry,” he repeats. “Migraine.”

“Explains why you’re brooding in the dark.” Tim’s voice is just a little quieter now, but there’s still an edge to it. Compromising, but not his principles. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here, though.”

“Here as in _not resting at home,_ or _here_ as in…” G-d, the _light._ “…Suddenly employed?”

“Both, I’d say.” The edge sharpens. “You in a state to explain, or what?”

Gerry dips his head back into his hand, eyes tight. “If you shut the door.”

Tim’s footsteps recede, and the light shrinks. Gerry sniffs faintly and regrets it, a cold needle of pain lancing through. He lets his arms flop down onto the desk and lowers his head down only for his browbone to catch on something hard and unexpected. He jolts back up, touching at his left arm to identify a wristwatch.

Confusion as to when he acquired the damn thing only lasts as long as it takes to feel a cuffed sleeve around his forearm, folded up and unbuttoned. In what’s left of the light shining through the rectangular panel of glass set into the door, he can see that the shirt is a deep, wine red, and that he doesn’t recognize it, either.

His hands flatten on the desk. No, not _the_ desk — _her_ desk.

No. His desk, now.

A wave of nausea. Gerry swallows, and regrets it.

“You’re sure it’s just a migraine?” Tim’s voice comes from above. He hasn’t sat down yet. “You seem a little—”

“I’m sober,” Gerry sighs. “Let’s get that one straight. But, um… ‘concussed’ is probably more accurate, come to think.”

Tim makes a disbelieving noise. “Oh, fan- _tastic._ That’s worse. _Why_ are you _here?”_

“Took up all my sick leave.”

“…It’s your first day.”

Gerry points a finger at the ceiling. “Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Give the man a goldfish.”

He doesn’t have to look up to imagine the way Tim’s shoulders draw up with tension. “I don’t follow. And I’ll say now I’m not here for the cryptic bullshit. It was sort of charming up in the library, but that was before you were upending my damn career.”

Gerry can’t help it. He scoffs, and accepts the ache. “Sorry, no. You gave up your career the minute you took a job here.”

“I didn’t take a job _here,”_ Tim hisses. “I took a job in _research,_ and you screwed me.”

“Research screwed you. Don’t pretend to be all fake-interested in _academia_ anyway, or like you really think this is the place for it.” Gerry gestures aimlessly. “Sit on the desk, if you want.”

“I’m not going to—” Another sigh. Chair legs scraping tile, a weight settling. Defiant, of course. “I’m not sitting _on_ your stupid desk.”

Gerry shrugs. “S’where I sat, when I was you.”

Right. That’s what it comes back to. He knows where to start now.

Next sniff hurts less. He shifts in his chair, doesn’t bother to straighten. In fact, it’s better to just put his head down entirely. Tim will have to deal with it.

“Not that you’re really me,” Gerry mumbles. “On account of you already being under contract, and all. I was never that stupid. Until now. Serves _me,_ I guess.”

“Hey.” Not quite a snap, but close. “I said _no_ to the cryptic bullshit. You could stand not to insult me, either.”

Gerry groans into the bandage on his right arm. That, at least, he remembers getting. “You could stand to give the bastard with the concussion a second to gather his thoughts. No need to get shirty.”

Brief silence. Gerry can feel it when Tim withdraws. “Sorry. Just… I didn’t exactly get much notice about this before I was told to pack up my desk and go meet the new Head Archivist. Imagine my surprise when I poke my head into your _Tartarean lair_ and see it’s the guy who’s been busting me into the restricted zones of the library with an old lady’s key card under the promise that he won’t get reprimanded because he _doesn’t work here.”_

“Ooh, good one,” Gerry muses. “Tartarean.”

“I’m serious.” Tim’s voice is dark. “I’m— frustrated, is all. Confused.”

“You’re pissed off,” Gerry corrects. “I get it. You didn’t come to this place looking to grieve your freedom on top of what you were already grieving.”

The air stiffens. “Excuse me?”

Sniffing hurts again. Gerry rolls his head on his arms, away from the dragging wound. It’s going to scar, he knows it.

“When did we meet first?” he asks. “Not even a month ago, was it?”

“Little over,” Tim supplies. “I think. I only started up in—”

“November, right.” Gerry nods against his sleeve. “Yeah. I felt you from all the way across the room.”

Discomfort. “How?”

“Who died?”

_“Excuse_ me?”

Too blunt that time, maybe. Oh, well. “Family, I’m guessing. Most people don’t end up on revenge quests for just anybody. That _is_ what you were doing in the library, right? That’s why you ended up here?”

Gerry almost hears the bones in Tim’s jaw shift to set. Probably in his head, the same as the notes of ghost music that didn’t-cling to Tim’s back as he stormed through the stacks, jiggling door handles and rushing up rolling ladders. 

He’d caught Gerry’s attention immediately. It only took a minute of watching him searching feverishly for a way to unlock a door for Gerry to decide to simply unlock it for him. Whatever he was after, he needed to find it. Gerry could understand without knowing what it was.

“…I don’t think I need to give you an answer to that. You seem to have it all figured out.”

Gerry wonders for a moment just how much Tim hates him right now. Hopefully, he can mitigate that some. It would be a shame if it hung over them.

“Most people end up here for one of two reasons. They’re ignorant. They… like ghost stories, and think the house down the street might be haunted. Or, they’re trying to figure out what caused the terrible thing that happened to them.”

“And you can tell the difference?”

“Can, yeah. Usually.” Gerry rubs his nose. Feels a bit like a child for it. “Easier when it’s too late. Not usually a _chance_ to step in before it becomes what you’ve got.”

Tim shifts in his chair. “…What is it I’ve got, then?”

“Aftermath.” Gerry looks up at him. “I’m really sorry about that.” 

“Spare me,” Tim scoffs. “Tell me what it _means.”_

Very well. It’s better he start with this, anyway. The easiest way to convince someone to care about the bigger picture is to tell them where they fit into it.

Gerry sits up and laces his fingers. “I’m assuming you found Smirke in that part of the library. You come across the Fourteen?”

The air in the room would shatter like sugar glass if it could fall to the floor. _“What?”_

So, he has. “You’re touched by the Stranger. Less than a year, feels like.”

Tim starts to stand. “Alright, yeah. This has been a _blast,_ but if you’ll excuse me, _I’m_ going to go beg for my old job back.”

“Waste of time.” Gerry’s head lolls in exasperation. “You’re better off here.”

Tim stops halfway up and slumps back down, his face turned up to the ceiling. Gerry can imagine the tendons in his throat flexing when he grinds a question past his teeth. “That so?”

Gerry holds his breath against the pain of straightening his head. He lets it out slowly, steeling for eye contact in the dark.

“If you want a chance to take down the Circus, yeah. You are.”

Tim freezes in his chair. Gerry watches his hands tighten around the arm rests. Being right is always sort of Pyrrhic.

“Thought that might be it,” he says, softer. “Wasn’t totally sure, ‘til now.”

“So, it’s real.” Not a question. “You’re saying all that rubbish is actually _real.”_

Gerry scoffs. “I don’t tend to limit myself to the way the old codger organized it, but it’s framework enough.”

“What do you know about it, then? The Circus.”

He shakes his head now. “Nothing that’ll get you your revenge by nightfall, so don’t get too ahead of yourself. I’ve been tracking it down for the past year. Gertrude for even longer.”

Tim stays quiet for a moment. “Is that what you meant before, when you said ‘when I was you?’ Are you saying she was running some secret operation, and you just yoinked the job when she croaked, is that it? And now _I’m_ the next sidekick?”

“Now you’re catching on.” Is it bad decorum to yawn? He’s so tired. “But I was never her sidekick, I was her lackey. That’s not what I need from you.”

Bitter again, but this time Tim laughs. “Good, because you’re not getting it.”

Gerry might never be able to convey how much he appreciates that. At least, not while his head is like this. Splitting open from the inside, heartbeat roaring.

“This is exactly why I asked for you,” he says past the private noise. “I’d much rather have a partner I can trust.”

The bitterness fades, just a fraction. Suspicion rises in Tim’s voice instead.

“How are you so sure that you can trust me?”

Gerry blows air between his lips, elbows sliding forward on the desk. “To be honest? The way you’ve been talking to me since coming in here.”

“I’ve barely kept from biting your head off,” Tim states. “How is that a point in my favour?”

“The key word being ‘barely,’ first off.” Gerry huffs a laugh. “I work best with honest people. Haven’t known many, but I’d trust them with my life a lot faster than somebody willing to lie to me. That includes tamping down their criticisms of how I’m handling something.”

“You saying you’ve been handling this like crap as some kind of test?”

Gerry smiles again, apologetic. “No, I’ve just been handling it like crap. Thanks for telling me. I’ll do better, promise.”

Tim shifts again in his chair. “…Right. Aside my stellar constitution, is there any other special reason I was hand-chosen from the litter?”

Dammit, he’s funny. Even when he’s trying to be angry. Gerry sort of hates himself for the relief that swells in his chest. Probably just because it reminds him of how long it’s been since he’s had a real conversation with anyone that wasn’t dying, or talking to him through a freezing fog. He doesn’t know when the last time was before the cliffside. Weeks, maybe. Had he even sang to the radio when he was alone?

Stop it. G-d, his mind feels like a punctured egg yolk, running all over the plate. He can’t keep lapsing into dazed silence.

He clears his throat. Maybe to mask the belated almost-laugh Tim’s joke had dragged out of him like a fishing line. Where was he again?

“You’re about as far from a civilian as anyone I’ve met around here in the last year. You’re already in this, and you cant go back. It serves us all this way, and it keeps other people out of here.”

A sharp sound as Tim sucks his teeth. More bitter gestures.

“Nice of you to have made that call without cluing me in. Sort of like how you’ve been having eighty percent of this conversation with yourself.”

Gerry’s brow knits. “I’m— I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant for.”

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know, I know. Concussed, and whatnot. You’re just… talking like you made all these choices _before_ that was an excuse you could use.”

“Really, I didn’t,” Gerry swears. “It all happened so fast, I—” 

He deflates. This is exhausting. There’s no use dancing around it.

“You were just the first person to come to mind. That I trusted. Safest, smartest.” Familiar.

Gerry can just barely make out Tim’s twisted brow in the dim. For Tim, the light in the room must have leveled out by now. It’s probably leveled out for Gerry, too, but it’s so hard to keep his eyes open.

“…We’ve met, like, three times and barely spoke. You don’t even know me.”

“I know what I need to.”

“Which is?”

He shrugs helplessly, hands open and plain. “You’re angry. Willing to break the rules. You would have busted into that part of the library if I hadn’t swiped you in, I know it.”

Tim crosses his arms, looks off to the side. “I’d have charmed my way in before I broke the damn lock.”

“Whichever method.” Gerry crosses his arms, too, and leans forward against them. “The point is, you’d have done just about anything to get what you were after. I liked that about you from the start.”

It’s a trait that Gerry recognizes intimately. Truly hates, sometimes, in a person who wants the wrong things. Wanting answers is more familiar to him than seeking power for power’s sake, even if he’s never had anyone to avenge. If he just gives Tim the answers he can, then that energy can be redirected before he barrels down a path he isn’t ready for. It’s mathematics.

“Thanks,” Tim says. He sounds extraordinarily ungrateful. 

No point in letting it sting. Gerry inclines his head instead. The lump in his throat will have to wait.

“I asked for you because you were the most logical choice. You’re already shackled to the stronghold. You might as well be down here where the action is. If we’re both looking for the same thing, we should pool our resources.”

Tim leans further back in his chair. Crosses his legs, folds his arms tighter. “I’ve got a hard time believing you requested me down here for the sake of my _‘quest’_ and the twelve words we traded in the library.”

“You’re right, that’s only part of it.” Gerry ducks his head. “Everything I said before. All of that counts.”

“You must know some crap people if just the fact that I’m _angry_ has given you this high an opinion of me.”

“It’s what you’re angry about,” Gerry says. “You want to do something about an atrocity you’ve seen, and you’ll fight back against whatever you think is standing in your way. I just need you to understand that I’m not trying to do that.”

“It just— it can’t be this _easy,_ you know? I can’t just be told one day that I’m headed down into some cramped up basement where a _vampire with a TBI_ will just up and tell me he’s got the answer to everything I was prepared to…”

“Prepared to what?” Gerry asks. “Treat it like it’s _Atlantis_ or something? You’d rather take the long way ‘round? Dedicate your life to doing it the hard way, and maybe never find what you’re looking for?”

For a moment, Tim looks particularly cross. It only takes a moment for him to deflate, his folded arms and legs unwinding and his hands slapping lamely down against his thighs.

“I mean… yeah, sort of. ”

Gerry doesn’t censor his sympathy. No point: it’s not pity.

“Instead of throwing your life away, let’s take it somewhere useful.”

“And what, we’re just going to go on some clown-hunting road trip?”

The wince and shake of Gerry’s head conveys more of a _maybe_ than a _no, that’s preposterous._ His face flattens again when Tim’s falls in disbelieving resignation.

“That’s sort of where I left off, yeah,” he admits. “I’m sure we could take care of some other things in the meantime, too. Keep ourselves busy.”

“Such _as?”_

“You’ve read the literature. There’s at least fourteen.”

Tim ties the implications together with his face in his hands. “Why do you _do_ all of this in the first place?”

“Never really had much of a choice.”

“Gee. Can’t imagine how _that_ feels.”

A pit opens up in Gerry’s stomach. Tim lifts his head and tucks a strand of loose hair behind his ear. For a moment he just looks deeply tired, touching idly at the side of his head like he’s about to undo his bun and tie it back up again. When he catches Gerry staring at him, his face hardens.

There is a question there of _do you understand?_ Gerry knows that if he were to say _yes,_ he would just be saying _no._

“I— I really just feel like it had to be you. I can’t explain it any more than I’ve tried to. And I’m sorry I didn’t manage to run it by you first, if I could have—” Could have what? Whatever it is, he would have done it had he had the choice. “I did bank on better communication than this.”

Another sigh. This one’s different than the last. Tim Stoker contains multitudes.

“I won’t tell you it’s fine yet,” he says. “But… I guess we’ll have plenty of time to work on that, won’t we.”

Gerry breathes out in relief. “That’s the plan, yeah.”

It’s the least he can do, to be accommodating. It’s the least Gertrude never offered him. He pestered her plenty and he wore her down some, but he’s not interested in making Tim work so hard to catch up. The last thing either of them need is to foster resentment.

“We might not be on exactly the same _page_ yet, but at least we’re looking at the same book. Can I just fire things off now?”

Shrug. “You’re the boss.”

“Nope.” Gerry wags a finger. “You’re gonna cut _that_ shit out right now. I’m not your boss.”

“So, this Head Archivist thing is just a front, completely?”

“Pretty much.”

Tim leans his elbows on the desk, rubbing his face into his hands with a groan. “There are definitely some people who are going to be pissed about this.”

“What, that it’s a front? Gonna start shouting that from the rooftop?”

“No, what the front _looks_ like.” Tim sits up to flop back in his chair. “What story are they even going to sell here to pass you off as qualified?”

“I mean, technically I’m almost _overqualified._ But, uh.” Gerry wracks his brain for the phrasing. “Think some nonsense about me being a transfer from another organization. Usher, or somewhere.”

“That’s in America, isn’t it? Sister organization?”

Something pleasant happens in Gerry’s chest. Guy’s done so much homework he didn’t even assign him. Happy day.

Tim rolls his eyes. Gerry must have let it show on his face. Oops.

“Yeah, well, to _me_ it just looked like you walked in off the street. How are you going to swing that for the others who might have wanted this job? You plan on sporting a fake accent?”

Gerry’s brow flicks up. “No one really comes down here if they can help it. And lucky for me, I kept a low enough profile whenever I came here. Stuck to the Archives, only came in when I had to link up with Gertrude before we caught a bus. I think the only person here who knows my face anymore is Rosie.”

“Lady at the front desk?”

Gerry nods. “She always gave me Simpkins.”

Tim cracks his knuckles, idle. It reminds Gerry to do the same thing.

“Cool, so— what, it was the _phantasmic stench of circus popcorn_ wafting off of me that made you blow your cover?”

Gerry considers. “I’d give your cologne better credit.”

He has the feeling that Tim might have kicked him under the desk were there not a solid front in the way. Gerry smiles back to the scowl; it’s not all that convincing anymore. He probably wanted to preen a little just then. Point for Gerry.

Tim recalibrates quickly enough. _“Okay,_ well, aren’t you supposed to work alone, Mr. Van Helsing? Isn’t that how this works?”

“S’how Gertrude thought of it.” Gerry shifts in his chair. His legs are falling asleep. “I impolitely disagree.”

Tim laughs once. “That’s not a good look for somebody who just took the job of an old woman who recently died.”

“Yeah, well.” Gerry swats a hand. “She can handle a little attitude on my part. She owes me.”

“Owes you… what, exactly?” Again, Tim just about laughs. “I mean, you already took her job.”

Gerry laughs again, too. “The truth, namely. I’m going to make sure you have that right off the bat.”

“I appreciate it,” Tim says. “I think?”

“You will.” Gerry sighs. There are only so many ways he can shift his position before he has to accept that this chair is uncomfortable. Maybe he can swindle a new one out of the Institute’s budget instead of having to buy his own. Wouldn’t that be peachy.

Gerry sits up with a soft gasp. Tim startles a little in his chair.

“What is it?”

“I can look through her drawers now.” The realization is a conspiratorial whisper. Gerry bends to reach for the handle to one and pull it open, swishing his hand around inside. He could have sworn there was something in one of them she just didn’t want him to find.

“Because _that’s_ not a weird thing to get excited about.”

“Shut up,” Gerry mutters. “She used to yell at me for this.”

He can’t quite help the mocking _ha-ha_ that follows. Childish, yes, but he’s fairly positive he’s got a right to be a little spiteful here. Not as if Gertrude can punish him any more than she already has.

“Okay, well, what are you _looking for?”_

“The truth.”

There is a long, hissing outbreath. “Thank you for reminding me of your head injury.”

Gerry ignores him. Probably shouldn’t be doing this in the dark, though. Not that Gertrude really struck as the type to keep mouse traps in her desk drawers or anything, but Gerry doesn’t know that for _sure._ She _was_ the type to take countermeasures. Sometimes simplicity is key.

In the second drawer down, he finds a plastic bag. Holding it up to the light from the door’s little window, he squints to read the label.

“…Plan to divine the universe’s deepest truths from an old bag of Werther’s Originals?”

Gerry does his best not to deflate. Thoughtlessly, he unrolls the lip of the bag to wiggle a hand inside it, only to slowly withdraw.

“…You know, on second thought. I don’t trust these.”

“How old _are_ they?”

“Don’t think it matters. Arsenic doesn’t expire.”

Tim gives an uncomfortable chuckle. It fades when Gerry doesn’t laugh back.

“…Wait, are you serious?”

Gerry hands him the bag. Without missing a beat, Tim reaches in and takes one. Gerry watches with great restraint as he unwraps it.

“Anything to get out of this conversation.” He tips his head back. “Cheers.”

Just as he’s about to drop it into his mouth, Gerry lurches up to grab his wrist. Tim blinks at him in mild surprise.

“I know we’re not particularly close yet, Tim, but I’m really not so keen on watching you die.”

When Tim lowers his arm, Gerry lets him go. Tim’s hand slides off the edge of the desk when he sits back in his chair, the caramel drop sitting on its wrapper between them.

“Noted.”

Gerry knows he must have a dark look about him or something. It might not have been all that risky a joke if he could trust Gertrude even a little bit. As far as he knows, these actually _are_ poison and he would have beaten her record for World’s Fastest Assistant-icide by an astonishing landslide.

The bag hits the desk with a harsh noise that Gerry only partway attributes to his injury. He tilts back over to stick his hand back in the drawer when he hears the shake of something bottled in front of him.

“Mint?”

Gerry blinks at the offer, dizzily half-focused on the feeling of gravity pooling all the blood in his head to the side hanging over the drawer. Sitting back up, he holds out a hand. They each pop a mint into their mouths in tandem, eye contact quietly barred until Tim breaks the silence.

“Alright, well, _that_ was agonizing. And completely my fault that time. Sorry.” It’s almost a grumble, muffled by the mint in his cheek, but Gerry buys its sincerity. “Anyway, just out of curiosity, what _were_ you actually doing before this? I mean, you _had_ to have a day job, right?”

Gerry thinks for a long moment. “Freelance.”

“Freelance.” Unimpressed. “So, unemployed.”

_“Self-employed._ Don’t you know what ‘freelance’ means? You’re _supposed_ to be posing as an academic.”

Tim’s mouth twitches, but stays in its stubborn, flat line. Damn. Still not enough. Gerry sighs, then, and relents, lowering his head back down onto his arms. He can scour the desk later.

“I spent my life in a bookshop. Traveled. Tracked things down, burned most of them.” He shrugs. “Some other things, here and there. Personal work.”

“You burned things for a living?” Skeptical. “Like… what, _cursed objects_ or something? The sort of claptrap up in Artefact Storage?”

Gerry lifts a hand to snap his fingers. The gesture slips, soundless. “Reminds me, we’ll need to keep tabs up there. I never had to bother before, but I don’t suspect I can go on ignoring it now.”

“Right. Awesome.” Tim drops his head back, rubs at the center of his brow like it hurts. “Christ, next you’re going to tell me you’ve got a _First in Ouija Board-ology_ or something.”

“Half a lib’ry science,” Gerry says mildly. “On my father’s side.”

“So, you’re _completely_ insufferable.” There’s a crunch from inside Tim’s mouth as he snaps his mint in two. “Cool.”

Gerry’s weak laughter at that is halved by a hissing groan. He moves up to grind his forehead forward against the heels of his palms for the pressure, mindful of the little bandage taped above the corner of his left eyebrow. The nicks on his cheeks and jaw aren’t worth a wasted plaster.

His fingertips stop dead at his hairline. Cautiously, he smooths a hand backwards, feeling how tightly his hair is drawn into a ponytail secured at the back of his head.

Alright. That’s bizarre.

Pinching the elastic, he pulls it undone. It doesn’t seem to be helping the headache. There’s a tenderness to his scalp when his hair falls back into place, an uncomfortable wave crimped into it now that doesn’t flatten when he combs his fingers through it. How long had he had it up like that? What time even is it?

Tim hasn’t spoken for a while. Probably concerned, or something. Who could blame him? Gerry hates making this sort of impression on people, especially when this might as well be the first. Doesn’t matter how many times he’s arched around Tim’s side to reach the card reader on the library’s shaded door for him. He might as well have introduced himself as Annoying Weirdo Who Says Terrible Things For No Immediately Discernible Reason last month.

With another regrettable sniff, Gerry lifts his head to look across the desk.

Yep. Concern. G-d dammit.

“…Did you actually get this concussion business checked out?”

Gerry lifts up his bandaged arm. “I can only assume they gave me the all clear.”

“You _assume,”_ Tim repeats. “You realize that in the last half hour, you haven’t said a _single_ reassuring thing.”

With great pains, Gerry sits up. “I’m not really trying to be reassuring.”

“What exactly _have_ you been going for, then?”

“Honesty, mostly? I’m sorry the delivery’s so off.” He really is. It’d be nice if he could stop sniffing. Nervous tic. “I’d be a lot better at this if I wasn’t… you know, yeah.”

“Next time, you should have a proper orientation seminar planned out _before_ you come into work.” Tim scoffs. “Bring a PowerPoint or something.”

Gerry smiles, eyes pinched. “I’ll have one for next time.”

“All I ask.” A beat. The levity fades. “What actually happened to you, anyway?”

“G-d, that’s right.” Gerry hangs his head. “They wouldn’t have told you how she died.”

“…I’m sorry, who? You don’t mean _Gertrude?”_ The fact that Tim laughs when he’s uncomfortable shouldn’t make Gerry feel relaxed, but something has to. “As in, like— what, you were _there?”_

Gerry’s mouth pinches now. “Yeah. It— yeah. I was.”

Tim’s discomfited smile falls away like a roof shingle in a hurricane. He doesn’t ask outright. He’s a better person than Gerry. Then again, the question is right there in his eyes. Maybe they’re not _so_ different.

No use dwelling. “I went along with her for her work — her real work. Took us all over, to, uh. Dangerous places, sometimes. Not always, but… you know, often enough for real risk.”

“Am I supposed to expect that sort of thing, then?” Tim’s voice sounds like a raised eyebrow. “How long until I’m mortally wounded in combat fighting the Mongolian Death Worm?”

Gerry shakes his head. “Hopefully never, if I can help it. This isn’t— this isn’t the norm, really. Neither of us saw it coming.”

Tim won’t know yet how unusual that is. Gerry still doesn’t know how they managed it. Maybe the mutual refusal to really grasp hands with the Beholding, he and Gertrude both clinging to the rain-slick railing of a crumbling tower with only the choices to jump or be buried alive.

The blue pattern of Tim’s batik shirt swirls like fractals. Gerry blinks himself out of tracing them, ducking his head apologetically.

“Can we start over?” Gerry asks, massaging his fingertips around where it hurts right at the base of his skull. “I feel like you think I’m a basket case.”

“I think you’re seriously _injured,”_ Tim clarifies. “Which means I can’t write you off as a nutter anyway. I’ll reserve judgment on that for when you’re back in your head, I guess.”

“Thanks.” Gerry attempts a smile, but he still can’t quite get his eyes open. “Can we start over anyway? I don’t like how this has been going.”

A long outbreath. An outstretched shadow.

“Tim Stoker,” he says. “Nice to meet you, again.”

“Gerry Keay.”

Before Gerry can reach out and take it, Tim pulls his hand back. “Sorry, _hold up._ The door out there says _Delano.”_

“…Oh, for the love of—”

Gerry drops his head down on the desk again, his shoulders shaking with helpless, silent laughter. A hand raises weakly to hold up unfolded fingers. “Take three. I’m _so_ sorry.”

“How concussed _are_ you?” 

“No, that time I genuinely just forgot—”

“Your _name?”_

_“No.”_ G-d, he shouldn’t be laughing. It _hurts._

Tim’s voice takes on the slightest hint of genuine humour. “This does not instill staggering confidence, mate.”

“I just forgot it was printed on the door like that, it’s— I’m used to the other name. More easily recognized by it. Which I guess was the whole point of putting _Delano_ on the door.” 

Gerry grins, in sheer disbelief at himself. Bouchard must be banging his head on the desk right about now. Tim must really want to start doing that himself.

“So, now you’re _well-known?_ Around what haunted fucking circles?”

“You can search me up and see, if you want. I know you’ll do it eventually, so you might as well get it over with.” Gerry folds his hair back behind his ear, as if it’ll help him to hear Tim any better. “In fact, I’d rather you do it right in front of me, so I can set the record straight and save you the freak-out.”

“…Uh-huh. What, like, am I going to find you’re linked to some terrible murder scandal, and see you’ve gotten another name up on the door to dissuade suspicions from any other random schmuck who might recall it?”

Gerry bites his lips together. He really hadn’t come in here expecting to torment this guy, or find it disturbingly funny. He doesn’t know what he could have reasonably been expecting, but he’s _pretty_ sure that wasn’t it. 

“See for yourself. It’s _K-E-A-Y._ Given name’s Gerard. We’ll kick off take three when you’re done with this.”

There is another silence. Gerry props his head up again to see the light of a phone screen, illuminating Tim’s face for the first time in a way that lets him process his features and expression. Red eyeliner. Nice.

The expressions are less nice. Gerry can handle being looked at with tortured confusion, even disgust and hatred, but it’s always a little strange to watch someone make a judgment like that as if he can’t see it. When he passed by people watching the news at the 24-hour laundromat, or when one of his ‘dates’ managed to pick the worst topic possible for small talk while dressing again. It’s different to watch someone react to an outsider’s perspective on the story. A projection of what they thought must be the truth, until it just _wasn’t_ anymore.

It’s not that Tim looks disgusted, or hateful, or even all that confused. After a few taps and scrolls, he just gives a strained laugh. A little distant. Overwhelmed.

“Alright,” he says, and clears his throat. When he looks back up at Gerry without his phone lighting up his face, there’s still enough light from the door’s little window to see the surrender there in his lifted brow, mouth bitten shut. It opens again with a deliberate _pop,_ the nod of his head quick and short.

“What exactly was that supposed to accomplish?”

Gerry blinks. “Most people get shifty. I need you to trust me.”

“This your an idea of an icebreaker?”

“Figured we were past that.”

Tim lets out a harsh breath, arms lifting just to fall against his sides in defeat. “Mistrial, huh?”

Gerry wishes it didn’t still hurt his stomach. “It’s complicated.”

“Thought you were trying to _uncomplicate_ things.”

“I knew this wouldn’t do that. I just—” Gerry drops his hand to the desk, resigned. “I’m doing my best to just lay it all out there, I don’t want you to think I’m hiding anything. I don’t like keeping secrets.” 

Tim goes quiet again. After a while, he crosses his ankle over his opposite knee and leans sideways in his chair.

“You don’t get a lot of _second_ dates, do you?”

_Dammit._ Gerry laughs just as easily as he makes an idiot of himself. “No, but not for the reason you think.”

Tim has a nice smile, even in the dark.

“Alright, so I know why you asked for me, so I could be your…” He gestures critically, stirring a hand in the air like he’s casting a spell. “Deuteragonist, or whatever. But are we going to be the only people down here, period? There’s, like, four spaces out there in the bullpen.”

“We’ll get some others down here eventually,” Gerry nods. “Won’t have a choice there, either. I think I just wanted to start small.”

“I mean, I would have thought _Gertrude’s_ assistants would still be hanging around. There have to have been others aside you, right? Did they just fly the coop when they heard you’d be taking over?”

Gerry laughs too abruptly. The darkness of the room spins and spasms. He catches his forehead in his palm again, a clipped sound of complaint rolling in his mouth. Masks it with a laugh, quieter now.

“She ran them all out long before she got her hands on me.”

“…Ran them… out of the country…?”

“Into the ground, mostly. All but my dad, I think.” He waves a hand. “Someone else called dibs on _that_ murder.”

Tim laces his hands together in front of him and rests his mouth against his thumbs. For a long moment, he stares at Gerry with the deep concentration of a man trying to figure out if he’s having a stroke or not.

“You just said so many words that I wish you hadn’t said.”

Gerry wrinkles his nose. “Get used to that. Sorry.”

Tim drops his head against his knuckles to give a far more theatrical groan, this time, before abruptly sitting back again. “You’re asking a lot of me, you know.”

“I know. Thank you for hearing me out.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Tim stretches his arms up lace his hands behind his head, arching his back with an audible grimace and relaxing with a sigh. “You don’t even know for sure yet if I’m cut out for this. I’ve barely been in this building two months, I can’t _believe_ you were even allowed to ask for me.”

“You need to stop viewing this as if it’s a real job.” Gerry rubs his temples. “If Bouchard gave me permission to do _anything,_ it’s because we came to an agreement about it.”

He can feel Tim staring at him. At least, he’s pretty sure it’s Tim. 

“So, it goes all the way up.”

“Yup.” Gerry stretches backwards, left shoulder popping. Less a pain than a relief. He settles forward with a sigh, rolling the joint. “He probably expected I’d just tell you everything I knew right out of the gate. I think…” He pauses to squint at the desk. “I think the agreement _was_ that I’d get to do that.”

Great. He remembers now.

“…Because that’s not the norm down here?”

Gerry’s eyes sting with exhaustion when he meets Tim’s, head tipped before he shakes it. “Not as far as I know. That changes now.”

Tim bites his lips together, discontent. “Well. Guess my life is in your hands, huh.” Gerry really wishes he couldn’t see his nose scrunching up. “Brilliant.”

“Better me than Gertrude.” At least, he hopes. Most of the people who have died _near_ him didn’t die _by his hand._ Not that Tim would find much comfort in that. “She was pretty frivolous with her assistants. One’ll still go on about it all day if you ask.”

Tim’s lip curls. “Thought you said they were all dead.”

“I know what I said.” Gerry waves a hand. “It’s not so black and white with Michael. I’m sure you’ll run into it one of these days.”

Once again, Tim’s face is priceless. “You know, in my experience, people tend to stay dead when they die.”

G-d. Gerry knows he’s just _trying_ to be snide, but _G-d._

“You would be surprised,” he says in a stage whisper. “I think you’ll want to wait until I can give you some evidence before you walk headfirst into _that_ topic.”

“Evidence of— You know what? Yeah.” Tim slumps forward again. This room feels so small, suddenly. “I think my brain will explode if you tell me much more _classified information_ right now.”

Gerry grunts faintly in response. “We’ll call it quits, then. The only clock we’re on is the Circus’, and they don’t much like linear time.”

Tim sucks his teeth again to break his silence.

“We’re going to talk more about that when you have your head.” 

Decisive, not frantic. Gerry nods in agreement and approval. 

There’s another moment where neither of them say anything. Gerry spends it thinking about where he might buy a desk fan to keep in here. His button-down is sticking faintly to his lower back where it’s tucked into his trousers. Times like these he hates running so hot. He hasn’t been able to enjoy winter since the year he spent one burning.

“I’m still not sold on exactly what we’re supposed to be doing here.” Tim’s voice is hushed, suddenly, like he thinks someone might hear. The eyes on his back must be prickling. “What, we just… clock in, and then go about our illicit _monster hunting_ business on company time?”

“Yup. Pretty much how I was planning to go about it.”

“Okay, but we’re still on payroll, right? I mean, I like to live indoors.”

Gerry shrugs with both shoulders. “Gertrude could afford all her weapons, so.”

“And you’re _confident_ this isn’t going to blow up in our faces somehow?”

“No,” Gerry snorts. “But I’m not about to waste the chance, regardless. It’s—” He sighs. “Gertrude told me once that I didn’t want her job. The ‘perks weren’t worth the shackles.’”

Tim squints. “You said ‘shackles’ before, yeah.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how most people see it. I sort of… don’t?”

“…Okay, how do you mean?”

“I mean—” _Sigh._ “I know what shackles are like. Literally and figuratively, before you ask, and this… feels more like an opportunity. I’m going to be stuck here, but I’m stuck here with resources and tools I would have had to scrape together on my own out of matchsticks and bubblegum, if I could even find _that.”_

_“Spooky_ bubblegum, right?”

“Ghost-flavoured,” Gerry confirms gravely. “The sort with ooze inside.”

“Ectoplasm.”

“You understand.”

Tim nods. It’s all very serious for a moment.

Gerry can’t keep it up for very long.

“And if I’m not stuck here, I’ll find a way to get stuck somewhere else.” The curl to his mouth is uneven, eyes down as he shrugs. Not a lesson he needed to learn twice. “I’m at least a little bit used to this place. Too acquainted with the Eye for it to scare me much anymore.”

“That reminds me,” Tim says, leaning forward. “What the hell is all this about, then?”

He drags his index along the knuckles of his own opposite hand, wiggling his fingers before he taps behind his cheekbones. Gerry glances down to meet his own eyes, drumming his hands on the desk.

“My mum called them a cry for attention,” Gerry says. He wiggles his fingers back. “Guess I finally got it.”

“I’m going to pretend to know what that means.” Tim gestures to the loose bun tied up high on the back of his head, around where Gerry’s mysterious ponytail had been. “That’s what my mum said about my hair.”

Gerry grins, and flicks one of his own earlobes. “Piercings, too?”

Mock surprise. “How did you guess?”

Couldn’t be the snake bites, the septum hoop, or the barbell in his eyebrow. Of course not. It hits Gerry very belatedly that the jewelry and the ink both probably played a sizable part in Tim’s suspicions. Not that Tim can talk about conventional standards of professionalism. From the looks of him, his hair is even longer than Gerry’s. Gerry’s almost curious to see him in the light again. He remembers thinking he had nice shoulders, when he saw him in the library.

Knuckles rap on dark wood. Gerry flinches.

“Hey,” says Tim. “You alright?”

A hard blink. When did he put his head down? Shitty of him, in the middle of a conversation. Right when it was getting lighter.

“Yeah, fine.” Gerry rubs his eye, expecting the tacky smudge of eyeliner on the side of his finger. None. He finds himself feeling very exposed. “Sorry. I’m really not making this much better.”

“This is about as good as it’s going to get,” Tim says. “And I think we should call it quits for now on the orientation, yeah.”

“Probably for the best.” Gerry rubs his nose to mask the sniff. “What time is it, anyway?”

“‘Round eleven in the morning. Way too early for all this, you ask me.”

Gerry’s brows flick up. G-d, maybe this place _is_ a prison. He hasn’t worked on a morning schedule since his mum had him stacking books as a teenager.

He hears Tim stand up from his chair and stretch, his hands slapping against the sides of his legs again. “So, since this job apparently just _isn’t real_ and we have no _actual_ responsibilities right this second, I think you really need to head home early.”

For a moment, the sentiment rings hollow.

“Uh… No, I don’t need to go all the way home.”

“I mean, your other best option is probably A&E.”

Gerry shakes his head. Carefully, he rolls his chair back to stand with both hands braced on the desk. “It’s not such a big deal. I’ll just open up the cot.”

“…There’s a cot in here?”

Gerry rolls his eyes at the way Tim glances around the room as if to find it. It’s probably tucked behind the file cabinet still.

“You’ll get your turn eventually.” Gerry waves a hand, shooing Tim towards the door ahead of him. “Go ahead and get out of here, I’m sure you have all sorts of shit you’d rather be doing.”

“Not gonna give me any assignments, boss? No sinister rota hung up anywhere that I need to look at?”

Gerry sways to a stop and glares at him. In the light from the door, Tim beams. He seems… taller, than the last time Gerry saw him. No, that’s not right. Gerry taps the toe of his shoe on the ground and—

Yep. He’s down to an honest 179cm without his boots, which makes stomping over to the file cabinet markedly less effective. Shame, when it’s all he wants to do.

Not that he’s got the energy for that to begin with. It’s more of a shuffle when he starts towards it, limbs loose. “Not unless you need to be _told outright_ to never call me ‘boss’ again.”

He’s unfortunately aware of how bossy that sounded. Whatever. He pats his fingers along the wall to find the cold, metal edge of the fold-out cot he knows Gertrude kept here. Before he endeavours to drag it out, Gerry sticks his hand in between the halves to feel around for the pillow Gertrude kept sandwiched there.

“Nope,” Tim assures him. “Message received. Need a hand?”

Gerry glances over his shoulder, the other somehow ended up pressed hard to the cabinet beside him. It’s cold through the sleeve of his button-down.

Screw it. He turns his back to the thing and gives an open shrug, granting Tim a path to reach around him. As much as Tim is going to need to acclimate to his world, Gerry knows he’s going to need to swallow a little of his pride. Two way street, all that. If he wants to make this work, he’ll have to give a little. He’ll have to give a lot.

In this case, he’ll have to take a little. Gerry points to an open space next to the desk when Tim looks at him questioningly, watches dimly as he unfolds the cot with more ease than he could say he would have if he’d been left to do it himself. Better he not embarrass himself further.

“Alright, there we go.” Tim brushes off his hands, almost for show. “Well, if that’ll be all, I’ll, uh… just leave you to it, then.”

“Thanks.”

Gerry attempts an earnest smile, and it turns out closed-lipped and brief. He crosses slowly over to the cot to bend a knee against it, pausing on his way to lying down as brighter light pours through the opening door.

“We never did do a third take on that introduction.”

He looks over to see Tim rest a hand on the doorframe. Tim’s eyes flicker down to Gerry’s shoes and back up, and he shrugs a shoulder. 

“We’ll save it for when you’re more yourself. How’s that?”

Gerry gives him a floppy thumbs up. There’s no response to it from the doorway before he collapses onto his stomach on the springy, foam sleeping pad with a muffled moan of pure relief. It takes effort to toe his shoes off, but at least he can do it without bending down to unlace them. One pro to leaving his boots at the safehouse, he supposes.

Are these just Adelard’s clothes, then? Gerry can’t really imagine he’d gone through the man’s personals, much less imagine Adelard wearing this shade of red. He can’t quite reconcile the idea that they could possibly be the same size anyway, given how the top of Adelard’s head barely clears Gerry’s eyes, but — he really isn’t sure where he got this stupid outfit.

Not worth thinking about. This pillow smells like the vent clip air freshener that Gertrude brought along for rental cars. Something lodges itself in Gerry’s throat that makes him want to stop breathing in altogether, if it’ll stop the sudden assault of hard facts.

Gerry doesn’t know how they didn’t see it coming. He doesn’t know how he ended up here. He knows how, but— he doesn’t know _how._

He would go to Adelard’s safehouse for the answer, if he could stomach it. He could ask, if he really wanted.

Gerry would rather stay right here and suffer the memory of long drives across the countryside, sleeping with the passenger seat reclined all the way back and waking up to the car already moving again while the local news droned through AM radio. Sleeping right here on this same foam cot that he knew she only kept here for him, because she would never risk shutting her own eyes in the Institute but she also wouldn’t risk him collapsing in the field. Coming here when he was bored or lonely or haunted by a haunting she exorcised herself, and having her humour him with at least a lukewarm shoulder.

The shoulder’s cold, now. Gerry doesn’t want to go back to the safehouse. To find it empty and unfamiliar, like he’s still trespassing.

Adelard Dekker has all sorts of warded places scattered around. He bounces between them, and hasn’t needed to be in London for some time. When Gerry managed to crawl back to the city and follow the directions he’d been given, Adelard answered the door with warm apprehension.

They talked for a while before Adelard left him with a neat paper full of contact information, a ring of plain keys, and an apology.

Gerry had spent years taking every opportunity he could to stay away from Pinhole Books. The safehouse would seem like an incredible gift, if not for the catch.

He doesn’t want to go back there to see it still left on the table, so heavy with its new page.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: mild gore; eye injury; character death; concussion; severe dissociation** (this is the only time that this sort of thing comes up in this fic, which is why the whole fic isn't tagged with graphic depictions of violence! it's also very minimal imo.)
> 
>   
> _"candorsteep" - extreme honesty; the literal drop that took gertrude's life; the steep road ahead, and the principle that will pave it_
> 
> \+ please refer back to the [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) for summaries going forward!  
> \+ my outline currently puts this at 5 fics, 35+ chapters, and i have more to do after that, so this is only the beginning :-)  
> \+ if anyone ever draws tim for this fic in the future, [here's a reference for his design!](https://titanfalling.tumblr.com/post/190468519608/) sans the worm scars and a little more severe, of course. dark times, a mere five months after danny's death.  
> \+ and, if you have any questions about jewish dekker, [please read this](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/630730123052761089/) TL;DR - nothing in canon actually says he COULDN'T be, and his action-oriented mindset really speaks to a jewish narrative. tikkun olam.
> 
> comments very appreciated, and feel free to yell at me on tumblr, @[gerrydelano](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/), too!
> 
> ON DECK: **WALLSCRAWL**  
>  i.e., tim's take on all of this, and some new faces


	2. WALLSCRAWL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are _not_ qualified to work in an Archive.”
> 
> “That’s _exactly my point.”_ Tim leans forward against the table, his voice an urgent whisper. _“I don’t belong down there,_ and _neither_ does the new Head. Bloody _Siouxsie Sioux_ looking piece of—”
> 
> “Sorry, _new_ Head Archivist?” Sasha sets her biscotti down entirely, hands held up in a _slow your roll_ sort of way. “What happened to Gertrude?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack** : [false confidence - noah kahan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWRWuY3pV2c)

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

Yikes. Like, seriously. Fucking _yikes._

The door clicks shut behind him, and Tim takes an aimless step. He stops when his hand comes to curl around the back of the chair he’d thrown his jacket over when he came down here, jaw working around a scream he’s been biting down on since August.

The moment he acknowledges it, it fades away. As always.

Tim takes a second, then, to do what he already knows is fruitless; he tries to take inventory of how he feels. He knows, logically, that the emotional rollercoaster he just went on could be better compared to being chained to a comet. He might have been furious, incredibly offended, maybe a little more than mildly hurt.

He can’t grasp back onto any of it. The harder he thinks on it, the further away it gets.

Yep, there it goes. Chronic emotional impermanence, right? If he could trade _any_ symptom.

It’s most likely the fact that he’d laughed, too, during. Fact that he could look into Gerry’s face and see that he wasn’t trying to pull his leg, that he was in no place to be carrying that kind of conversation in the state he was in. Tim can glean from looking back that he’d _had_ to have felt guilty every time the guy apologized when he got a little snappy, because honestly. Come _on._ He looked so _earnest_ about it. 

It just made Tim feel like a prick, which must have made him doubt all that fury, and offense, and hurt. He must have cycled through at least five of his preset personas in just the last forty-five minutes alone, and _none_ of them worked because Gerry just accepted _all_ of them. He would have let himself be yelled at. He seemed relieved to hear a joke. Tim can’t be _too_ angry at someone so obviously wounded, but he can’t just give in and _immediately_ pal around with a person who had the nerve to look him in the eye and just ask him _who died._

So now he’s back to square one: not knowing what the fuck he’s supposed to be doing next. His favourite state of being.

Well, there’s always a way out of it, at least theoretically. Tim takes a deep breath, and asks himself what he might do if this were a new round of Professor Layton. If he’d found himself here on his own, and knew what he was looking for.

The atmosphere down here really does suck. All harsh fluorescent tube lights and over-cramped shelving stuffed with cardboard boxes full of paper and Manila and fuck only knows what else. The lids on some of them seem pointless, if they won’t shut. Some of the ones left open don’t seem like they should be.

The walls in the bullpen area are lined with rolling carts and actual _piles_ of barely-shut folders that range from knee to chest height with such dangerous tightwire balance that it almost makes Tim’s heart pick up with anxiety. He makes it to the back of the room where the stationary stacks begin, but he stops himself from exploring the full distance of the aisle. This place could really do with some mobile shelving — the sort of stacks that can be moved with a crank wheel. Or it would, if it were a real fucking Archive.

It doesn’t feel like a real one. Not that Tim has spent a lot of time in places like this, but it doesn’t — it doesn’t feel _right_ down here. It feels like if he were to stop and pay attention, he’d see his breath puff out in front of him despite the heat running. There’s an itch at the back of his neck.

He has to wonder if he would feel this way if he hadn’t been _told_ it wasn’t real. It feels worse when it’s just him standing here alone. When he knows for a fact that there’s only one other person in this basement with him, and that they might very well have just entered a coma.

It’s a damn good thing he had his hearing aids in during all that. Gerry’s voice had gotten so quiet at times that it was hard to hear everything he said. Some part of Tim wishes he’d heard some of it wrong, and that when he gets a better explanation, it’ll be different. Even the part that wishes for that knows it won’t be.

He stands still to listen for a moment, and wonders if the fact that he doesn’t hear anything means that it’s safe, or if he’s just _not hearing something_ that is there. What the hell would be there? Not some old bag with a kitchen knife and a murder plot, considering the one that _used to_ be down here is dead now. Possibly murdered by the infuriatingly pleasant dude currently half-dead in the office, who may have also possibly murdered his own mother.

Christ on a bike. If he keeps thinking about it like a video game, he’s going to drive himself into the ground before _Business Casual Bucky Barnes_ in there has the chance to.

Damn, that was a good one. It’s actually disappointing that no one got to hear it. He makes a mental note to keep that on the backburner, and then thinks instead about what Sasha might tell him to do next, if he asked her.

Well. Probably to skip to the part where he just asks her. Tim grabs his jacket off the back of the chair as he passes on his way out the door.

He’d spent half that conversation thinking about her. Being told that he’d thrown his career away the minute he took a job here was like being smacked over the head with a cast iron skillet, and not because _he_ had ever dreamed of eventual academic renown.

Tim could have said, _“Oh, I know someone up in Artefact Storage who can give us an in!”_ He could have, but he’s not about to drag her into this until he’s fully invested. He’s not sure he can say yet that he is.

Which sounds extremely hypocritical now that he’s thinking it outright. He was willing to throw himself into this other task that… for the moment, he hardly remembers the details of. So, he can be reckless and impulsive on his own, but when someone offers him a real solution, he resists? Jeff would weep.

Not that he could tell his old uni counselor about this any easier than he could have told a new shrink about his plans without getting thrown into a white room. It was Atlantis. Someone would have tried to stop him without even caring to question whether what he saw was _real._

As much as he wants to resist, as much as he _doesn’t want it to be real_ — Tim _wants_ to believe Gerry. Gerry believed him without needing to ask. He’s only ever known one other person willing to afford him that.

“Hey! Sasha!”

Sasha turns around in a flurry, honey-coloured ponytail whipping over her shoulder. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses until she recognizes him, a hand lifting from the folders held tight to her chest so she can push the frames up with two fingers and a sigh.

“Oh, Tim, it’s only you.” Her brow creases. “What are you doing all the way up here?”

Tim jogs to reach her. He feels awfully winded all of a sudden. “Were you just about to go for lunch?”

Sasha shrugs to indicate the files in her arms. “I mean, not _quite_ yet, no. I have to put these back at my desk and sort through a few things. What’s the matter?”

_“Please_ leave this building with me.” Tim folds his hands as if in prayer, points his fingertips in her direction. “Can we go somewhere?”

He watches her process the request in real-time. He knows she brings her lunch from home most days. He knows she is deciding against reminding him.

“Sure,” she agrees. “Just come with me to get my stuff. I’ll slip out early, I don’t think Janice is _quite_ enough of a toady to rat me out over five extra minutes.”

Tim hangs his head in relief, lifting his laced hands. _“Thank_ you.”

“Don’t thank me,” she smiles, sing-song. “Thank Janice.”

Tim smiles back at her and gives a thumbs up. “I’ll have a gourmet hamper delivered straight to her desk.”

He has no earthly clue who the hell Janice is.

Composing himself with his hands in his pockets, he follows Sasha to her desk and avoids the eyes of every other practical researcher they pass. All of them are busy, looks like. Any time it feels like one of them might be staring at him, he turns to find them with their head down.

He’s getting paranoid. Great. Because that’s exactly what he needs.

There’s a little coffee shop across the street, and a few storefronts down. The winter chill is almost a shock after all that basement heat. Sometimes, Tim forgets the seasons change. It always feels a little too much like summer nowadays. He lets his hands out of his pockets, fingers stirring the cold as he and Sasha walk in relative quiet.

She must be making all sorts of conjectures in that big, beautiful brain of hers. It’s not as if Tim would disagree if she told him flat out that she was giving him time to really gather his crisis into a neat little ball to toss her way. Can’t catch a handful of spaghetti, or whatever. It’s thoughtful of her. It’s not working.

A girl with a high, nasally voice takes their orders. Tim rubs his thumb over the little snowman drawn on his coffee sleeve and wills himself to just start talking already. Rip out the shitty allegorical Jenga block that’ll collapse him before Sasha has to pick up any more of his slack.

Fuck it. Geronimo.

“So,” he begins. “This morning, I was transferred down to the Archives. Effective with _freakish_ immediacy.”

Sasha snaps her biscotti in half. “What?”

“Out of _nowhere,_ Bouchard just _accosts_ me and tells me that I’m being moved to the basement. Said I _‘hadn’t really established myself too heavily yet in research, so it shouldn’t be so troubling a transition.’_ That it’s better I swap now than make myself at home and…” What was that weird phrasing? “And _‘disturb my equipoise?’_ I think.” Jesus Christ. “It was _fucking_ creepy, now that I think back on it.”

Sasha’s freckles do this funny thing when she twists her face up like that. Like they’re swimming around her cheeks and resettling, like gold foil or fish flakes in water or something else really pretty that’s _completely_ in his head. “And you didn’t ask _why?”_

Tim gestures helplessly. “It was just polished enough that I didn’t really think I could argue? At first, I just tried to rationalize it like… _‘okay, I can still go up to the library, probably. It’s just a lot more stairs.’_ What’s up with there being no lift in this building?”

Sasha shakes her head. “No idea. It’s against all _sorts_ of regulations.” Then she pauses to scrutinize him, suspicion and doubt in her dark eyes. “You are _not_ qualified to work in an Archive.”

“That’s _exactly my point.”_ Tim leans forward against the table, his voice an urgent whisper. _“I don’t belong down there,_ and _neither_ does the new Head. Bloody _Siouxsie Sioux_ looking piece of—”

“Sorry, _new_ Head Archivist?” Sasha sets her biscotti down entirely, hands held up in a _slow your roll_ sort of way. “What happened to Gertrude?”

Tim winces, and covers his face. “Oh, _G-d._ Of course it’s not circulated all around yet.”

_“What,_ Tim?” she presses. He lowers his hands, still grimacing.

“Uh. She’s dead, apparently.” Ugh. “And from what I gather, it wasn’t pretty.”

Sasha’s eyes look about the size of her lenses for a solid three seconds before she blinks them back to normal. She sits back in her chair, shaking her head at the snow outside the window.

“That’s… _when?”_

“No idea. I reckon _really_ recently, if the new guy’s any indication. He came in here all beaten to hell and _concussed,_ and says all of it’s from whatever killed her.”

“Oh, my _G-d?”_

_“Right?”_

It feels so good to talk to her that it almost feels wrong. Tim doesn’t talk to many people these days.

Maybe it feels wrong because he can see it on her face how disappointed she’s trying not to be. She had only mentioned it to him once, the possibility of a potential promotion. They haven’t run into one another near enough for her to spill her guts like they both used to in school, but he did know it was on her mind.

Sasha tents her fingers against her temples. “I already know how insensitive this is going to sound, so don’t bother telling me, but I’m sort of annoyed no one said anything to me.”

There it is. Tim wrinkles his nose again. “I know. That was my first thought, after about six rounds of _what the fuck.”_

“I just—” She sighs sharply, rolls her eyes to the ceiling again. “I hadn’t been thinking _too_ heavily on it, but I talked to Gertrude a few times and she brought it up. I never told her exactly how much I hate practical research, I didn’t want to seem too eager for her to retire, but she seemed to just… _know.”_

Tim shifts his jaw. “How so?”

Sasha waves her hand. “I don’t know, she was _seasoned and wise_ and whatever else. That sixth sense that about fifty percent of old ladies develop.”

He raises a brow. “What does the other fifty percent get?”

“Whatever makes them misgender you in a way you can’t even get upset with them for, because they give you money for every birthday even after your eighteenth and you know they _literally_ just don’t have the space in their brains for new information.” She points a finger, educationally. “Those are the cookie-baking grans. Gertrude was _not_ a cookie-baking gran.”

Tim nods. He never met Gertrude, but he’ll take Sasha’s word. He doesn’t know anything about cookie-baking grans, either, but he’s met her abuelita. Sweet lady. Not the brightest.

“I don’t blame you for being put off,” he says. “I was prepared to go to bat for you, but I never really got the chance. Wouldn’t have done any good, I’m told.”

“Why are you saying it like that?” She leans forward to look at him, head tipped. “You look pretty upset. It’s not all on my behalf, is it?”

It doesn’t really sound like a question. Tim can’t remember every emotion he’d felt earlier. What he knows is that he’s tired now, and he can’t be arsed to lie.

“No,” he admits. “It’s— it’s a lot, Sash, I don’t even know where to _begin.”_

There’s a moment where she’s quiet, thinking. He listens to her take a quiet sip of her drink and set it down. He debates burning his tongue on his own.

“Start with the new guy, I guess. What’s wrong with him?”

Tim’s head falls to the table a little harder than he should have let it. He groans in equal parts relief and exhaustion. _“G-d,_ you are _not_ going to believe this.”

The only option is to tell her everything he’d been told, including the fact that Gerry suspected he’d only been given permission to bring one person down at a time to induct them as his presumably-sole confidant. That’s when he lets Sasha interrupt him (after silencing her first give or take seven attempts).

“Wait, wait. So, you heard this whole thing is some kind of supernatural mob front and your first instinct is to blab about it to me?”

“As if you would not murder me where I _stood_ if I did not tell you about this.”

She rolls her eyes again, her head bobbling from side to side. Yeah, that’s right. She can’t deny it.

“I don’t plan on telling everybody and their mother,” he clarifies. “But I thought you deserved to know. And… and I think _I_ need you to know.”

Something sloshes around in his gut like oil. He can’t look at her. He doesn’t have much longer that he can stall if he wants to burn his tongue on his coffee. Wonders if the pain will do anything to set him right.

“Are you asking me to come down there with you?”

A laugh tumbles out of his mouth, unbidden. “I mean, I wouldn’t _hate_ that.”

He _does_ hate the disbelieving twist of her forehead. She bites her lip, staring down at her untouched, bisected biscotti, and shakes her head.

“I… Alright, take a second, Tim. Do you realize how demeaning a favour that is to ask of me?” Her mouth twitches into a wounded smile. “I don’t want to work as an _assistant_ to this _random person_ who swooped in and stole the job I was thinking of gunning for. Gertrude sort of… got my hopes up, a little bit, I mean, I thought I’d have more time to make myself _known_ as a prospective candidate, but—”

Tim shakes his head. “You’re not happy where you are, you said it yourself.”

“Okay, no, see, if the job had been _offered to me,_ that would be one thing. But you’re asking _me_ to ask for it, essentially? You’re asking me to ask for a demotion, that feels— _weird,_ and pleading, and bad.”

“It’s not _real,_ Sasha. None of that would have made a difference.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.” She crosses her arms. “You have _no_ proof of that right now aside the word of this total stranger with a traumatic brain injury that was confused by his own ponytail. I _highly_ doubt that anything he says can be taken all that seriously right now.”

He sits up straighter. “It’s— I don’t think it’s that simple, Sasha. He said things that he couldn’t— there’s no _way_ there’s not some truth behind it, he…”

Sasha’s shoulders drop when his do.

“…You really believe him.”

Tim throws his hands up, his mouth flapping wordlessly for a frustrating, forever-feeling second before he presses his arms down hard against the edge of the table to look her in the eye.

“He’s kipped down in his office right now on this cot that’s just _there,_ because apparently people sleep in that office to _recover from injuries,_ which he _says_ aren’t the norm, but he _might_ have just meant that _Gertrude dying_ wasn’t the norm, which I would imagine is true, except that _people dying_ in general might very well _be_ the norm, because _apparently all of her assistants have died_ except for _one,_ who is _still mad about being killed_ and won’t stop going on about it.”

Sasha’s face is owlish and frozen. Tim does his best not to blink and ruin it.

_“Tell me_ you don’t think it’s interesting. I am inviting you to lie to my face.”

She looks so torn. It’s so hard not to be jealous of the things that stop her from siding with him without question. He can’t stand their importance outweighing his, even if he understands it. Even if he knows how this sounds.

“Look,” she begins after wetting her lips. “I want to help you here, but… this sounds _ridiculous?_ You _know_ most of the stories we get are complete bollocks.”

“He knew about Danny.”

Sasha’s face does something different now. He would feel guilty if it weren’t exactly what he needed. Her silence is enough of a cue to continue.

“He just _looked_ at me and asked me _who died.”_ Tim can’t help sitting back to fold his arms, pressing down on the hateful heat rising up in his chest. “Apparently knew way back in the library, that I was after something because I _saw_ something, and—”

Sasha is so easy to talk to. So easy, without fail, except when it comes to this. It took an entire month after his first day at the Institute for her to corner him and demand an explanation for the state he was in. It took hours to let her pry it out of him. It took a bottle of tequila to get through the pain of it, and another night spent at her flat to get over that. Took nearly a week of avoiding her afterwards to get himself back on track. It’s taken until now to even say his name again.

Sasha James is the last person Tim would bother lying to, even after all the time that passed between graduation and the funeral. He still remembers the shock of seeing she’d gone blonde. It’s still sort of alarming to look at her and see how she’s changed. Comforting to see how she hasn’t.

She did believe him, after all. As much as he had been willing to say at the time, she didn’t doubt him.

“I never told you exactly what I saw because I didn’t think you would believe it. I’m still not sure you would, so I won’t.”

“Tim…”

“But this guy just looked at me and _knew._ Brought up things I haven’t— I haven’t even _muttered aloud_ to myself alone in my _house,_ let alone asked anyone about. I can’t _not_ take a chance on it, I mean… If I don’t, that means I didn’t come here to figure it out. Just means I came here to give myself more to lose, and… torture myself, or something.”

Oh, yeah. Psychology. He’s heard of it.

“I need to know,” he decides. “And I feel safer if you know, too, I— I feel like _you’re_ safer. If you at least know what I’m doing.”

Sasha stares at her drink for a long time before she manages another swig. Tim’s chances of burning his mouth are gone. He’ll end up tossing his in the bin.

“Let me think about it,” she says eventually. “I want to at least finish my current caseload first, you know? I’m almost there on that freaky mason jar.”

Tim snaps. “The one with the human heart in it?”

_“Presumably_ human.”

Finger guns. “Still beating?”

“Steady eighty-five per minute.” Sasha grimaces. “It gives us an age range to work with. There may be a presumably-human man in his mid-to-late fifties out there missing a vital organ. I’m _this_ close to finding him.”

She doesn’t want to find him. She doesn’t want him to exist at all, or for there to be a freaky heart in a jar, or to be the person handling it. Tim knows she hates interacting with Artefact Storage just as much as he knows that the reason she’s reluctant to leave is because she has to prove something to herself by sticking it out. She’s not hiding any of these things from him. He can’t claim betrayal if it’s all right there on her face. He also knows he can’t push her any further if he really wants her to think about it.

Back to the drawing board, then.

“Give _me_ the jar,” Tim suggests. “We’ll test if it beats faster in the presence of an irrefutable stallion. You could narrow down some more traits about the guy based on his taste in men.”

Sasha stares emptily at him. “I’m going to forgive you for calling yourself a _stallion_ because you’ve been having a bad day. Don’t push the limits of my mercy.”

Tim grins at her. “Keep your freaky jarred heart, then. See if I care.”

“Cry about it, Tim. Write it a love letter.”

Sasha is so easy to talk to.

Eventually, she checks her watch.

“Alright, well, _you_ might not have a ‘real’ job, but I think I still sort of do. Janice can only cover for me so long.” She sweeps up her biscotti back into its bag and pops the lid back onto her drink. “I need to get back. And… you should probably take some time to let this settle.”

All at once, Tim feels utterly lost. He nods, leaning on his elbows.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll just, uh. I don’t know what to do?” He laughs. His hands smooth over his hair, itching to undo the elastic. “I don’t know what to _do,_ Sasha.”

He sees her settle back down in his periphery more than he hears the shuffle of her coat against her chair. When he manages to glance up at her again, her face is drawn in consideration, but it’s softened a little.

“Just… go and scope out the Archives a little more. See if you can figure out the sorting system. Who knows, maybe he really _is_ right, and you’ll find some answers down there.” She shrugs a shoulder, adjusting the strap of her bag. “And if all of that was just _swollen brain tissue_ talking after all, you’ll still have some idea of where to start putting the place together anyway.”

Tim shakes his head, but he can’t think of a better route. It would feel weird to just go _home_ in the middle of the day. He’ll probably end up playing math games on his phone after a while. He’s got a feeling he’ll be downloading a _lot_ of new apps in order to get through this with his own brain in tact.

“G-d, okay, _fine.”_ Tim sits up from the table and starts to gather his things, pausing halfway out of his chair. “If he doesn’t wake up on his own before closing, can you just come down there to check the office with me? I don’t want to be caught alone with a dead body.”

“Sure thing.” Sasha tosses her head a little as if her hair isn’t already secured back in a ponytail, brushing past him to open the door and greet the cold. “I sort of want to meet this guy for myself.”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

Gerry looks a lot more like himself today. At least, Tim _thinks_ this is more his baseline. His t-shirt’s got a skull on it, thorny roses weaving in and out of the eye sockets. The bandages on his arm are a little thinner, the one on his brow is gone. Tim’s eyes flicker to the cuts on his cheeks when he looks off to the side.

The next day after their meet ugly, Tim walked into the Archives to find a hot pink sticky note stuck to his desk with a mobile number etched onto the bottom.

Taking your advice. Call/text if you need anything

Tim didn’t do it, but he did input the number into his contacts under “library guy.” It felt better, at the time, to just keep calling him that. If only to stay in that weird little bubble when he knew for certain he liked something about him.

It’s way easier to call him _Gerry_ now that they’ve successfully managed that third introduction. All it took was two days of Gerry recuperating at home and Tim kicking his feet up on his desk securing a high score in Bejeweled, when he wasn’t peeling through boxes one at a time.

It’s Thursday morning and Gerry is sitting at the desk beside him, his boots kicked up now and one of them tapping. Tim’s turned off the Bluetooth playing music through his hearing aids so that he can focus on whatever Gerry has to say about the papers he’s looking over.

“It’s the first thing I found that was genuinely _creepy,”_ Tim explains to break the long silence, impatient for a verdict. “I must have gone through five entire boxes full of sleepover pranks and haunted text message chains.”

“This isn’t really relevant to what we should be looking for.” Gerry holds the papers out to him. “See, right there at the end. He said outright that he’s just got a weird boner for the Choke.”

“Can you call them by the names I _know,_ please?” Tim snatches the letters out of his hand and gives him a sour look. “It’s the first one I saw that seemed to mention _any_ of them.”

Gerry shrugs, tipping his head back. “Good eye. You could have passed a Stranger one somewhere, but you might’ve been too focused on looking for mentions of a circus to pick up on it.”

The corners of Tim’s mouth pull down as they always do at that _stupid_ word. Nineteen-year-old him wouldn’t have ever guessed he’d develop such an innocuous, random trigger.

“What else should I be looking for?”

Gerry cracks his knuckles, his eyes drifting to his right arm. He thumbs the edge of the bandage taped there. “Most people would take one look at the thing that killed Gertrude and assume it was of the Hunt.”

Here we go again. Answers in anecdotes. Tim props his cheek into his hand.

“It was running around in the forest tearing things limb from limb. Big, nasty teeth.” He traces two fingers down the length of his forearm, barely skimming the top of the bandage. “Breath like blood and sewage.”

“Gross.”

“You’re telling me.” Gerry sighs. “It was an animal, is what I mean. Or, it was mimicking one. _Or,_ it was mimicking too many.”

There’s this little knot at the very center of his brow as he tries to focus, eyes pinned on the crease between wall and ceiling across the room. Tim glances at the cut on his jaw and thinks of spooky, sentient trees swatting at him. Like Ents or something.

Sentient. Senti-Ent. Hah.

Yeah, not the dots he needs to be connecting.

“Had the big, nasty teeth, and fur in some places,” Gerry continues, entirely unaware of Tim’s relative genius. “And then on the other hand, it had feathers and talons and wings. If I’d tried to look at it any longer, it might’ve had… I don’t know, reptilian eyes or something. I couldn’t make out its face, though. Likely because it didn’t really have one.”

“And this means… what, exactly?”

Gerry’s hair hangs loose and straight over the back of his chair, shifting as he tilts his head to rest against it. “We were focused on the Stranger. Gertrude wouldn’t have wanted to go and find it if it wasn’t connected somehow to the path we were already on.”

“Okay, so are you saying we should start there?” Tim asks. “Go back and find it or something?”

_“G-d,_ no. If I hadn’t killed it, Dekker would have.”

Okay, whoever _that_ is. Gerry stretches his arms over his head. There’s a pop from somewhere, loud enough for Tim to pick up on without straining.

“We need to start someplace else. I’m mostly thinking about where it _came_ from, you know? It could have spawned right there in the woods to mess with the fauna, sure. Confuse them out of their ordinary defense instincts by being every predator at once. But I don’t think it belonged there.”

Tim leans back to cross his legs. “Isn’t that sort of the point, though? The fact that it didn’t fit in there?”

Gerry smiles, brows flicked up. “Yeah, _obviously._ But you know what I mean.”

“Uh, nope. Sorry, chief, I’ve still only been here for about thirty seconds and just because I read one book about some ancient white guy’s fear philosophy doesn’t mean I know all the particulates.”

Gerry just shrugs. “We were thinking it escaped from somewhere.”

“Or was set loose,” Tim mutters.

A nod. “That’s frankly the most likely. Most creatures bred into something like that don’t want to leave on their own.”

He says it like he knows how it feels. He also says it like it’s nothing. Tim could not be paid to try and unpack _that._

“Okay, so, like… say it’s the Circus, like you were hoping for. That would be their idea of the bear in the wagon?”

“And the lion,” Gerry nods. “And the tiger.”

“Oh, my.”

“And the cockatoo. And the monkeys, probably. But, like, all stacked together into a bigger monkey dressed up as a velociraptor.”

Tim flings a paperclip at him. “Alright, I get the point. It’s a really bad animal. You’re thinking they unleashed it at some point so it could go all King Kong on _Leicestershire?”_

Gerry picks up the paperclip from where it fell into a fold in his shirt and starts twiddling it between his fingers. “I mean, ultimately yes, but it’s not like they’ve got it out for Leicestershire specifically. It’s more likely it lost its way.”

“That makes it sound almost _normal.”_ Tim rubs under his eyes, careful of his eyeliner. “The fact that it could even _get_ lost or confused.”

“It’s an agent of the Stranger,” Gerry says easily, as if that means anything to him. “In the end, that’s probably all it was ever going to be.”

That doesn’t sit right. Gerry doesn’t say it like they’re in one of those movies where the twist is that you’re supposed to pity the monster, at least, so Tim does his best to bite down on it. When Gerry flings the paperclip back at him, he snaps up a hand to swat it before it can hit him first.

“We don’t have to start with that thing,” Gerry offers. “I mean, it’s dead. There’s only so much I can do to retrace its steps after all this time, and the snow. I doubt the troupe is anywhere near where they were last week. Chances are, they’re in bloody _Uruguay_ by now.”

“Alright, so where _do_ we start?” Tim pulls the letters off the desk to wave them around. “Since the gravedigger was so irrelevant.”

Gerry looks around and winces like a teenager being told to tidy his bedroom. After a second, he drops his head back with another groan into both hands. “I hate this. I don’t _want_ to go through them one by one.”

“Then you shouldn’t have taken an archiving job,” Tim reminds him. “Or cursed _me_ with one.”

“I _said_ I was sorry.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re _both_ sorry I’m here.” Tim scoffs a laugh, twisting in his chair. He makes a reach for the stack of folders he’d pushed across the floor to be nearer to the desks only for his hand to slip off the top, arm dangling miserably.

“I don’t want to do this, either,” he complains. “Hey, can’t you just… stare at the shelves and make your special, spooky eyes pick out something useful? Like how in video games, something glows when you’re meant to pick it up.”

Gerry doesn’t miss a beat in laughing. “If only. I think I know where we’re actually supposed to start, though.”

Tim lifts his head. “I’m all ears.”

“If we plan on running around following _any_ leads, we’re not going to want to leave this place unattended. I don’t know what sort of sneaking went on here while Gertrude and I were out and about, but I don’t think I want to risk it happening now.”

Tim’s brow sinks. “You think someone would come down here and mess with the files?”

“Why else do you think she left it like _this?”_ Gerry gestures to the chaos around them. “If we want to fix it so _we_ can find things, we’ll need an extra body or two that can stay behind. Preferably people who don’t mind paperwork.”

Tim’s teeth scrape on the inside of his cheek. Sasha hasn’t gotten back to him since the coffee shop. Heart in a jar must be giving her loads of trouble.

She said that it would be different if she’d been offered the job, rather than Tim begging her to beg for it. He shouldn’t take advantage of that phrasing by hoping that Gerry might agree and just ask her himself. Her name stays out of his mouth.

And besides — he remembers Gerry’s initial stipulation. As far as he knows, Sasha’s never been in his position. Tim doesn’t want to be the one to put her in it.

He claps his hands and rubs them together. “Alright, how about we go shop around?”

Gerry laughs again, abruptly this time. “What?”

“You said you ‘felt’ me from clean across the room up in the library, whatever _that_ entails.” Tim shrugs. “Creepy word choice, by the way. I’m sure you could do that again. Building’s fairly small, but I mean, there have _got_ to be more people than just me that are here for reasons like… you know, reasons like ours.”

_Ours,_ not _mine._ There are a thousand ways someone could have ended up here. Tim doesn’t know Gerry’s yet, but he knows it’s more than, _“I woke up one day with a place to be.”_

“Alright.” Gerry pats his hands down on his legs, rubs to his knees. “You’ve actually spoken to people here. Where to first?”

“Research,” Tim answers quickly, standing up. “Biggest department with the most people cycling in and out. All else fails, we head to the library again.”

Up they go. They could start in _practical_ research, Tim knows, but he thinks he should give Sasha the out. If she sees him skulking around there with _Waifish Weston Cage,_ she’ll stare and he’ll notice and it’ll be a big _thing_ and Tim will have to come clean about not being able to keep a secret for more than the fifteen minutes it took to find her after he unnerved himself out of the Archives. No thanks.

Gerry gets a little winded halfway up the stairs. Tim doesn’t think much of it. He _really_ should put in some kind of complaint about the lack of lift in this craphole building. Not that it’ll do any good. Who knows how much HR really does around here, if it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Tim holds the door open when they reach it, gesturing for Gerry to step inside ahead of him. Least he can do, given how slow he’s walking since they ran out of hand rails.

“Still vexed by your mortal wounds?”

Gerry leans on the door to prop it open as Tim steps inside after him. “I already had a bad leg. It’s nothing.”

Tim won’t press it. None of his business. “Long as you’re good to be walking around. It would be a real shame if you wiped out right in front of our _prestigious_ potential recruits.”

Willard’s picking his nose behind a folder. Classy.

Tim sort of misses this room a little. It’s full of people, even if he didn’t make a point to talk to any of them if he could help it. He knows enough of their names through sheer osmosis, had tried to memorize what it took to make each of them avoid him on their own. Same tricks work on most people. A surly look here and there, a back turned to the brunt of the open space, something important looking in hand at all times. Just look busy, mostly. He’s never had to get mean.

Tim flattens himself against the wall when someone brushes past with an armful of folders, his hands out in apprehension for some of them falling until the person’s too far out of reach for his help to matter. When there’s space, he gestures out with both arms.

“Anything shiny catch your eye? Where are the essential NPCs?”

Gerry exhales a laugh, his back to the wall, as well. “Do you think in video game logic _all_ the time?”

“Would you rather I treat it like we’re at the dog pound?” Tim props his hands on his hips. He nods knowingly when Gerry pulls a face. 

“Just do your thing.” Tim sniffs, jutting his chin. “If you can get it up.”

“Bugger off,” Gerry mutters, before he starts scanning the room with great focus.

If he’s being honest, Tim just wants to see how it works. See if Gerry was full of shit about why he’d approached him in the library. Maybe he was just shy or something. Didn’t want to admit he’d just been keen on flirting. Wanted to take it back so it wouldn’t get weird. Polite of him.

Tim might be willing to believe that if it wouldn’t leave the question of how he knew about Danny unanswered again. And if he wasn’t so painfully _blunt_ otherwise.

There’s a long moment of pure silence as Gerry’s eyes flicker from person to person. Nothing extraordinary seems to happen. His pupils don’t turn funny shapes or start flashing, the lights don’t flicker, the earth doesn’t shake. Tim grins at an older woman who turns her head at the exact moment he stops staring at Gerry to check for suspicious onlookers. Nothing to see here, Patricia.

“Over there.” Gerry points to the very back of the room.

Tim follows his arm, and just barely keeps himself from pumping both fists in absolute victory. He snaps his head up to check the room when he feels the _“Yes!”_ he’d meant to whisper jump out of his mouth a lot louder than intended. Oops. Sorry, Patricia.

Gerry’s head recoils in surprise. “O-kay. What’s the story there?”

“That guy is _perfect,”_ Tim says, more conscious of his volume as he leans to speak closer to Gerry’s ear. “He was my desk partner when I was up here. No wonder we got on, if you could pick him out like that.”

Gerry tips his head, almost pouting in consideration. “His mark must be very old. I can’t quite make out what it’s from. What’s his deal?”

Tim jabs a finger in his direction. _“He’s_ just as willing to pose as a health inspector to get past some red tape as I was to break down a library door. I think you two will get on _famously.”_ Tim bumps Gerry with his elbow, smiling fondly. “You’re going to _love_ his vendetta.”

The grey in Gerry’s eyes is very cold when he wants it to be. “You just performed an experiment on me.”

“And it was a success!” Tim claps his shoulder. “You have an _excellent_ crime radar.”

Gerry doesn’t bother swatting him away, instead glancing back to the far end of the room and walking right out from under his hand. Tim blinks after him before he lurches to reach for his arm again.

“Slow down there, Speed Racer!” To his surprise, Gerry stops and turns to face him. Tim lets go of his sleeve. “We need a game plan before we go over there.”

“Sorry. Habit.” Gerry crosses his arms. For whatever reason, Tim finds himself very aware that he’s got his complete attention. “What do you suggest?”

“Uh…” Tim scratches the back of his head. “Honestly, you should probably just let me handle it to start. He’s probably more stubborn than even me, I don’t know if he’ll warm up to you quite as fast if you barrel in with there with Dark Factoids you just read off him with your Dark Laser Vision.”

Gerry stares at him. “So, you’re just going to add ‘Dark’ to the beginning of everything I do. That’s what we’re doing now?”

“If the platform creeper fits.” Tim glances over Gerry’s shoulder, his hands finding his pockets. “I don’t actually know that much about him. We never exactly traded tragic backstories. Just names, one each. Agreed if he found anything about Smirke, he’d tell me straight away, as long as I kept an eye out for Jurgen Leitner.”

Gerry’s eyes hadn’t done anything weird before, but they do something now. Nothing _supernatural,_ probably, but they pinch up at the corners in a dry, deadened sort of look before they roll so hard that Tim can almost hear the billiard clunking sound effect right in both ears.

“Son of a bitch,” Gerry sighs. “Well, this will be easier than we thought.”

Tim cocks a brow. “Grow up on some less than soothing bedtime stories?”

Gerry elbows him away to start walking again. “You _really_ need to stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Tim quick-walks to catch up.

“Reading me like a book.”

There’s a joke here somewhere, so Tim smiles. It’s enough to give him something to go off of, at any rate.

Just as they close in on their target, he glances over to meet eyes with Gerry before they each take a seat; Tim in his old chair on the other side of the long office table, and Gerry directly on the edge of it behind Jon’s open laptop.

Jon startles under the shadow. Pretty badly, actually, wow. Clutching his heart and everything. His eyes bounce rapidly between the two of them before settling on Tim in recognition, visibly delegating where he should put his disgruntlement first.

“Tim,” he greets, clearing his throat. He primly pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Where have _you_ been? I was beginning to think you’d died.”

“Nope, not me,” Tim corrects him cheerfully. Jon’s expression twists.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was reassigned to the basement.” He glances to his right; the only person who might be able to hear them talking is already wearing headphones. Tim lowers his voice anyway, confident enough in his volume control even when he can’t quite hear himself speaking. “Did you hear yet? Old Gertie bought it.”

Jon blinks. “G— Gertrude _Robinson,_ she’s—?”

“Dead,” Tim confirms. “Super, duper dead.”

Gerry looks askance at Tim over his shoulder. “This is your ‘game plan?’”

“Hush up, let me handle this.” Tim leans on his elbows, eyes fixed firmly ahead. “We have a rhythm.”

Jon shakes his head hummingbird-quick, hands lifted in confusion before he points both index fingers at Gerry. “Sorry, and— _who_ is this?”

Tim gestures grandly. “This is the new Head Archivist. Obviously.”

For a second, Jon straightens up as if he needs to make a better impression on someone important, before he gets a proper look at Gerry and stops cold. Tim should _not_ be delighting in the way that Jon studies him with scrutinizing disbelief, leaning back somewhat in his seat. It’s the piercings, probably. And the ink. And the skull t-shirt. And the fact that he’s sitting directly on top of a few papers that Jon is surely going to claim he needs _right now_ despite having forgotten them there while he hyperfocused on something else for the last half hour.

“…Of course. Silly me.” He seems to debate holding his hand out for a shake and decides against it, introducing himself with plain skepticism and an arched eyebrow. “Jonathan Sims.”

“Gerry.”

“Pleasure,” Jon says dryly. Yep, there he goes, reaching for the edge of a folder under Gerry’s leg. “Could you please— _remove yourself_ from my workspace, I was in the middle of something.”

“You heard the man,” Tim chimes in, waving a hand. “Dismount.”

With a squint over his shoulder at Tim, Gerry obliges, rocking onto his feet long only enough for Jon to slide the papers out from under him. The moment they’re gone, he sits back down, arms folded. Jon looks entirely beside himself. Gerry looks entirely unperturbed. Tim can’t tell which of them is funnier to look at.

It’s not supposed to be funny, though. Tim might put on his good humour hat if he didn’t already know a little bit about how Jon ticks. Jon hasn’t been the type of person to demand that from him, which Tim can say plainly has been a big part of the reason he picked him out of the crowd when he first came here, too. 

For the most part, they’ve been all business. Agreeable silence has taken up most of the time they’ve spent sitting across from one another, and Tim liked it that way. Jon didn’t bother him, he didn’t bother Jon, no one else really bothered either of them because Jon’s pedantic reputation preceded Tim’s employment here.

He was a good buffer while it lasted. Maybe if they both find themselves on the right track, they could just skip to being proper friends.

“I promised you’d be the first to know if I came across anything about Jurgen Leitner.” Tim nods his head at Gerry, a quieter substitute for big, cartoon arrows materializing to indicate him. “This fine gentleman right here might be just what you need.”

Jon’s jaw snaps shut, his eyes like round, black coins. Exactly the look Tim had been expecting. It’s probably shitty to feel triumphant.

Fists clenched on the table, Jon turns his head up to face Gerry. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much I should say in here,” Gerry answers. “Mind if we step out?”

Jon glances tersely between his desk area and his cane propped against the wall behind him, and snaps his laptop shut.

There is a conference room on this floor with an open door. At least, Tim _thinks_ it was open. Gerry steps inside with no trouble or hesitation, without even peeking through the window to see if it was in use. Fun.

Jon hovers anxiously next to a chair, leaning heavily on his cane. Tim makes a point to sit down on the edge of the table now, more comfortable setting a precedent for relaxation now that no one else is around. If this goes how he thinks it will, he won’t have to waste his energy trying to put on a show for Jon, either.

Gerry doesn’t seem any more concerned with office formality now than he did when he at least pretended to dress the part. He crosses to the other end of the room and pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Mind if I crack the window?”

Of course he’s a smoker. Eh, well. Pobody’s nerfect.

“I’d… actually prefer it if you didn’t.” Jon winces as if in anticipation, before he seems to decide that he needs to justify it. “Coming up on two years.”

“Happy for you,” Gerry says, very genuinely, and slips the box back into his pocket.

Cool. Great. Anyway.

Tim shares a quick glance with Jon before he clears his throat, unfolding his arms to snap his fingers, gesturing towards where Jon is still standing. “Alright, Ger, do your thing.”

Without falter, Gerry takes his cue. He crosses back over to sit down in a chair like a normal person for once, his eyes locking onto Jon’s face from across the conference table.

“What do you already know?”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"wall scrawl" - writing on the wall; impending misfortune // "walls crawl" - the walls are alive_
> 
> see if you can figure out the next kenning before the chapter goes up ;-) comments & kudos very appreciated!  
> [ [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) | [tumblr](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/) | [GTCU masterpost (has all the lore that i'll be using)](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#) ]
> 
> and with our first four pieces on the board, the game can really begin.
> 
> ON DECK: **HOUNDWARREN**  
>  i.e., gerry's got a rough day ahead of him!


	3. HOUNDWARREN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “For the last time, I’m not my father.”
> 
> Michael is unmoved. There’s a little unbothered scoff, as if Gerry is only pulling its leg for the fuck of it. “Blood is bones is someone’s ghost.”
> 
> “Slick verses,” Gerry says. “Still not him. You don’t know me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack** : [trouble - cage the elephant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w41e0aBkoZs)
> 
>  **CWs in the end notes!** (please take heed this time!)

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


In his memory, the door doesn’t lock. There is no knock before it opens.

Mum’s been dead a while now, so it can’t be that she changed her ways. Cold comforts. Gerry still wakes with his heart in his mouth. 

He rolls to his feet with a stumble on the blanket strewn around his legs, the thinnest cotton he could find to balance how hot he runs with a desire to sleep underneath something. The shock of curly, red hair moving back and forth past the little window in the office door is enough to tell him he doesn’t have to rush over to answer as fast as he rushed out of the cot. Good thing, too. It made him dizzy.

Rosie’s smile doesn’t falter, forgiving of his delay — at least, seemingly. Gerry’s does, though, when he sees the girl. Rosie’s arm is wrapped around her back, her hair and grey hoodie completely drenched from the rain outside. She’s shaking so hard he can see it through the blur of being cut off from a dream.

Oh, fuck it all.

“Gerard,” Rosie greets him, cautiously. “Are we interrupting anything?”

“No,” he says quickly, but he doesn’t manage to suppress the yawn. Rosie stares at him as he rubs his eyes, her hand squeezing around the girl’s shoulder in a clear attempt to warm her. Behind them, Gerry can see that Jon has half-risen from his chair in the bullpen area, and somehow looks just as despairing as Tim does with his face in both hands.

They really need to work on their strategy. One of _them_ could have woken him so he could pull himself together, bought him some time. It’s not like they didn’t already know he was asleep, they could have _warned_ him.

“This is Raphael,” Rosie announces, slowly, as if in reminder. “She’s here to make a statement. I offered to have her sit somewhere to write it down, but—”

But Raphael’s hands are fisted tight in her own sleeves, arms a vice around her middle. Her fingers are red from the cold. It doesn’t look like she’ll let go any time soon.

“I figured it’d be best brought straight down.” Rosie rubs Raphael’s arm. The girl sways faintly, held upright by another hand at her elbow. “Very warm down here, too. I think that would help some, don’t you?”

Gerry’s stomach goes heavy with dread. He’d almost forgotten that this was bound to happen sometime. Two weeks he’s been here, and somehow it slipped his mind that new statements would be coming in while they strongarmed through the old ones. Traumatized civilians have no way of knowing he’s new to this. What he wishes they knew was that coming here isn’t designed to help them.

He can’t beg Rosie to take the girl somewhere else, wait for her hands to thaw out so she can write down whatever she has to say. Any delay in understanding her problem will only make it worse. Gerry won’t be responsible for that.

“Yeah, I do,” he agrees, his eyes on Raphael now. No time for self-doubt and judgment. “Better already, right? Quieter inside. No more rain.”

Raphael is staring at his chest. Her face is blank, but not thoughtless; he can see her eyes flickering back and forth, like she’s reading something written on his shirt. It’s plain black today, is the problem. The problem is that there might really be something there.

A prickling pattern buzzes along his scalp — a familiar, static swirl curling above his left ear. Gerry glances over Raphael’s head at the bullpen area when he hears Jon start to whisper to Tim.

“Should… should I get something for her? What could I…”

Tim chimes in dully. “I don’t know, Jon. Tea?”

“Tea!” Jon jumps to stand. “Yes, I’ll— I’m going to go get that now, right.”

All eyes are on him as he hurries out of the room, silence blooming in the air like water for a few moments after he’s gone. Tim turns his head to stare blankly at the office doorway, and jab his thumb towards the exit.

“He’s going to get tea.”

“Gathered,” Gerry says, just as flatly. Raphael is no longer reading nothing on his shirt when he looks back down at her, shredded lower lip caught badly between her worrying teeth. Her dark eyes are bruised with sleeplessness. They meet Gerry’s with pleading desperation.

Gerry steps aside to let her in. Rosie walks in with her to guide her to the open chair, murmuring something comforting. Gerry exchanges another look with Tim, a helpless shrug in both of their hands before Rosie squeezes back through the doorway and waves politely to them both as she leaves. With a mournful salute from Tim in parting, Gerry turns to face the music, and shuts the door.

He wishes he’d thought more about how to circumvent this. There’s a reason he never asks anyone for their story when he presents them with their options.

Raphael has let go of her sleeves to rub wearily at her face. Sitting down, she looks at least slightly more relaxed, if not still like she rolled straight out of the cardboard box in _Oliver & Company._ Gerry crosses over to the cot to snatch the blanket up off the end of it.

“You can take that off if you want.” Gerry points to her hoodie. “Let it dry a while. Take this instead.”

She nods, but it takes her a fumbling moment to undo her zipper and work the soaking sleeves off of her arms. Gerry trades her the blanket for the hoodie, draping it messily where the blanket had been on the very corner of the cot, sleeves outstretched so it’s got a better chance at drying. Only as he’s stepping back over to his chair does he realize he’d left his boots in a heap on the floor when he’d gone to kip down. Fuck.

Raphael is side-eyeing the cot as he sits down, the blanket wrapped around her back and a handful of it bunched up by her nose. “You sleep in your office?”

“I don’t always get the chance otherwise,” he admits, watching her face. G-d. She’s only a teenager.

Her eyes flutter on a quick series of blinks. She sniffs, shoulders hiking up. “So… what, you just don’t work?”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” Gerry tips his head. “That’s my job.”

Raphael nods like there’s a song in her head. Gerry doesn’t like that he can almost hear it. When she doesn’t say anything else, he sits forward.

“Do you know how this works, then?”

“Do _you?”_ She blurts it out with a shiver, almost smiling. “No offense, but you don’t… really look like you belong here.”

“Oh, what, at such a highly regarded academic institution?” Gerry gives her an experimental smile of his own. “Do I look too cool, or too stupid?”

Raphael’s mouth wobbles like a fissure crack. “Is it backhanded to say both?”

“Nah. Much rather you just be honest.” He leans back into the cushion of his chair, letting it rock with his weight. “I’d say calling me daft right off the bat is a pretty good start. Long as you don’t suggest I start wearing tweed to fit in with the brainiacs, I’ll believe everything you say to me is the truth.”

He just wants her to laugh a little bit. Whatever brought her here, whatever’s put her in this state — he gets the feeling she hasn’t laughed in a while. It might be harder to, after she manages to get it out.

She doesn’t really manage the laugh, but he sees her trying. “I don’t know if I should just go with it or what.”

“Go with…?”

“This whole ‘relate to the kids to get them to open up’ show you’re putting on. I’ve been to plenty of counselors, they always try that, and it— it doesn’t really _work,_ you know. We see right through it.”

Gerry hisses. “Ouch. I’m not _that_ old.”

“Well, you’re not in _uni.”_ She huffs a breath out of her nose, thin smile fading fast. “I don’t know how that’s going to work out for me, rate I’m going.”

“Hang on.” Gerry holds up a finger, scooting back to dig his phone out of his pocket. “Before you get going, I need to test something out.”

Her brow is twisted when she pushes her water-heavy, black hair out of her eyes. “Right, yeah. Forgot you have to record these things.”

“Me, too,” he snorts. Opening his voice memo app, he sets his phone down in between them. “This isn’t what I’m going to be using to take the statement. I just need to prove something to tea guy out there.”

A skeptical blink, but — genuine intrigue, too. “Prove what?”

“Just… tell me your name, and what you’re here to talk about. You don’t need to say much, it’ll probably only take about ten seconds.”

It’s sort of amazing that she’s not arguing this part. She must be sort of rowdy underneath the PTSD. It could just be that she’s at the end of her rope. Least Gerry can give her is some office comedy.

She wiggles to sit up, eyes fixed on the phone as she tries to enunciate past the lingering chatter of her jaw.

“My name is Raphael Castillo. I’m nineteen years old, and a student at UCL. Um… I’m here because I can’t— I can’t sleep, there’s something… Hang on, am I doing this right?”

“Little more,” he prompts. “Did something happen?”

She nods. “Yeah, I mean— I mean, maybe nothing, but nothing’s been the same since. Like… Like I said, I can’t sleep, I haven’t slept right since.”

“Since when?”

“I—” Not good that she can hesitate about that. “I don’t know, not that long? Wait, what day is it?”

Gerry presses the stop button on his screen, and swipes down from the top for the time and date. “It’s Friday. Last day of January.”

For a moment, she looks unfocused. “Oh.”

Pity won’t help her sleep. Recognition would mean nothing to her. The branded space above his ear throbs out of time with his pulse. He waits for her to come back to herself.

“What did you do?” she asks.

Gerry presses the play button, and turns down the volume a few clicks. The recording only gets so far as _‘my name is—’_ before it’s swallowed up in gritty growls and glitch. A second or two into the solid toned squeal that overtakes the audio, Gerry turns it off again with a wince.

Raphael stares at the device before she finally laughs.

“Yeah,” she says. “That happens. That’s happened before.”

“It’s not just you,” Gerry offers. “If that helps at all.”

Judging by the look on her face, he doesn’t think it does. It doesn’t seem to worry her as much as defeat her. Gerry wishes he’d said something else.

He puts his phone back in his pocket and goes for the drawer beside him to find the tape recorder he’d put in there. They’d found a few in a box while searching around, and he’s known for years that the Powers do a number on digital interface. If Jon needs proof of that, so be it.

“To get this down, we’re going to have to go analog.” Gerry places the recorder between them, shrugging. “Make fun, if you want.”

“No, I get it.” Raphael shakes her head. “Like I said, it’s happened before. I study computer science, I know it’s not… normal. In a weird way, I’m— sort of relieved it happened in front of someone else. Do what you have to.”

Gerry drums his fingertips on the desk. “Well, what I have to do and how much I want to do it don’t really line up, so I’m going to need you to bear with me here. I know it’s going to sound weird, but I don’t want you to make a _statement.”_

Raphael sits up a little in panic. “But—”

“I want to try this like it’s a _conversation,”_ Gerry clarifies. “Just chat.”

“Isn’t that going to mess with your Archive, or whatever?” Raphael sniffs. “Make it hard to… use it for research, or whatever?”

“I don’t care about that,” Gerry says plainly. “I just want you to be able to say whatever you need to say, and nothing more. If you get stuck or lost, I’ll bring you back to it, but you don’t have to tell me _everything_ for me to believe you. Deal?”

He gets the feeling she’ll trail off, otherwise. But he’s not about to drag it out of her.

Gertrude didn’t tell him much about how she did her job when they worked together, and he hasn’t been eager to read her death and ask now. Hasn’t gone within three metres of the Catalogue to move it from its place on the safehouse table. He can imagine the wood rotting underneath it like a scorch mark. He can imagine how angry she must be. He doesn’t want to touch it.

But he does remember hearing her through motel room walls, reading her little ills away. Remembers watching from the sidelines once or twice when she asked someone a _question._ He remembers being afraid that she might decide she wanted something from him that he hadn’t already willingly given, before he remembered that none of his secrets were all that valuable. 

It didn’t take a genius. It’ll just take some trial and error to find a way to put it off. Something is telling him not to _take a statement,_ so he won’t. Not as long as he can help it, if he can. Maybe more to _see_ if he can.

“Alright,” Raphael agrees, scrubbing a hand over her cheek. “Long as I get it out. I mean… at this point, I’ll take anything I can get. I haven’t been able to tell anyone about this, not the whole story.”

Gerry pushes the start button on the recorder. Here goes nothing.

“Thirty-first of January, 2014,” he begins, sitting back in his chair. “So, your name is Raphael Castillo. You said before that you’re studying computer science.”

“Yeah, on scholarship.”

“Congrats.”

“Thanks.” A sheepish exhale, then a bitter one. “Like I said, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be keeping that. Though I suppose I’ve been thinking of it more as ‘how soon until I lose it.’ I haven’t been turning in my assignments.”

“You said you can’t sleep. That ‘there’s been something, since.’”

“Noises.” A rough swallow. “Lights. Since last term’s exams, after… Alright, should I give you some kind of… background or anything? Start at the top?”

“If you think your background could tell me something about what’s happening to you.”

“Happening to me. Right.” Quiet. “I can’t tell if I want that to be true, or if I _want_ to be told it’s all in my head. I-I mean, isn’t that just as bad? One nervous breakdown over uni stress, and I throw my whole life away?”

“Let’s not be hasty. You wouldn’t be here if you really thought it was just stress.”

“Well, _no,_ but— Okay, background first. I get this weird feeling it _does_ have something to do with this, you know? The fact that there’s nothing there that could single me out as this, like… tragic protagonist in the imaginary movie being made about my life from cameras in the bushes or in my dad’s eyeglass frames. I’m nothing special.”

“You said you got into school on scholarship. That’s pretty special.”

“It’s only a partial, and it’s all from busting my arse. I’m not some… lifelong supergenius, taking apart the family’s desktop since I was six and building rocket ships out of the parts. Just a hard worker, I guess. There’s nothing to _gain_ by haunting me out of the one thing that’s ever gotten me anywhere.”

“Sounds like you think something’s got it out for you. I take it you did see something. You mentioned noise and lights.”

“Yeah.”

“Raphael, hey.”

“Hm?”

“Lost you for a second.”

“Sorry. Where was I?”

“Exams ending. There were lights and noises, and you can’t sleep. What happened after exams?”

“We went to play laser tag. It wasn’t my idea, it was Danica’s. Uh, Danica Haley, if you need that. She might already be regretting rooming with me this term, but we were honest friends before this. We went with enough friends for three teams in really early afternoon, so we had basically the whole place to ourselves.

“It was supposed to help us unwind. I’d had my last exam just the day before, so I thought I was in the clear.

“I’ve always loved laser tag. There’s just something _special_ about it. You know that feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater really late, and the world feels kind of unreal? It’s like that the minute you walk in. All the blacklight and neon everywhere, the dry ice to give it that weird sci-fi feel, all of it. Even though the whole place _reeks_ of sweat, once you get used to that, it’s like you’re in another world.

“It helped, at first. It had been a while since the last time I went, but I didn’t do so bad. I couldn’t remember the last time I was that relaxed. I didn’t think I’d… I really ruined it, I think. At the very _least,_ I made a complete fool out of myself. You don’t scream bloody murder in front of all your friends and expect them to just forget about it.

“We broke for snacks after a few rounds and ended up chatting with some of the staff, since most of them were around our age. Only one of them wasn’t really, and he kept his distance for the most part. Just watched. I get it, I mean, if I was stuck working someplace like that past my thirties, I don’t think _I’d_ be trying to kick it with a bunch of uni students, either.

“It was an accident when I made eye contact with him. Usually, I’m the first person to look away as fast as I can when that sort of thing happens, so I don’t know why I _didn’t_ this time.

“I wish I had, because he didn’t, either. He just waved at me. Which I guess was his way of being polite from afar, or whatever, but something was still… really _wrong_ about him. I don’t know how else to describe it. Something in how his arm moved, or his smile? Nothing I could really put him on the spot for. The idea of doing _that_ made me more uncomfortable than looking at him, and before I knew it, it was over anyway.

“Not that I think he has anything to do with what happened after. I mean, how could he? He was just a guy. I’d say I wish I could get him out of my head, but I don’t even remember his face anymore other than how it made me feel.

“Danica suggested we do a final free-for-all before we called it a day. Her with her bright ideas. It never occurred to me to blame her for this until I started saying it all at once. I don’t think that’d be fair, but maybe it’d be easier.

“It was the older guy who checked my vest before we started. Just cursory stuff, tightening the straps and all. Right before he moved on to the next one, he said, “Good luck.”

“And I know what you’re thinking. _Hello,_ obviously _that’s the bad guy! Don’t be the idiot that runs into the laser tag arena instead of out the front door!_ It’s easy to think that after the fact, or about someone else. I mean, if my life’s just secretly a movie, you’re free to think it about me. But I wasn’t thinking that at the time.”

A knock on the door stirs the blacklight. The pads of Gerry’s fingertips are pressed hard against the thin ridge of the fractal above his ear, kneading at the ache of it since — shit.

Gerry’s eyes flick up to see Jon looking mildly panicked through the little window, nodding down at the doorknob in question. Sighing and sitting forward, Gerry waves him in. There’s some clattering as Jon juggles the doorknob, an orange ceramic mug, and the handle of his cane, but he sidles into the room with an apologetic face.

“Sorry, did I ruin the audio?” He stutters in place for a moment before he steps close enough to Raphael to pass her the mug. “Ah— here, here you go.”

“Nope,” Gerry answers quickly. “In fact, I sort of wish you’d come in earlier. What took you so long?”

“Oh, um.” Jon laughs uncomfortably, wiping shakily at his cheek. “Um, I don’t spend a lot of time in the breakroom, or really make tea in there. Um, ever. I forgot I left my mug down here, so I had to come back for it but it fell off the desk a-and the _handle_ broke clean off, and then Tim gave me his, and by the time I got back someone else was using the kettle, so I had to wait.”

Gerry hits the stop button on the recorder. He wishes he could pretend he doesn’t know why he didn’t hear the sound of the mug breaking. Raphael has taken to sipping her tea, her eyes big and quizzical as she peers up at Jon hovering nearby.

“I’ll just— I’ll just go then, now that— Yes, my apologies.”

“Jon, hang on.” Gerry waves him back over, and then holds up a hand to ask him for another moment. He looks to Raphael and waits for her to see him. “Do you think you’d feel alright writing the rest down?”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

Before Raphael leaves his office, Gerry gives her his mobile number. He can’t think of anything else to do for her but lend an ear. His is already plenty cursed. What’s a little more Spiral to tighten the coil? If she can’t sleep, better she wake him than her brothers so he can convince her to call them in the morning.

Jon and Tim offer to take her to the canteen for lunch when Gerry mentions offhand that she hasn’t eaten since yesterday. It’s a little worth the indignant colour in her cheeks when she glares at him for narcing. As long as she eats. Maybe the rain will have stopped by the time she feels fit to walk back out, too. It better have, actually; her hoodie was _almost_ dry by the time she finished writing her statement.

Gerry stayed in the room with her while she wrote it, playing FarmVille on his phone. Better to give her some space away from him, let her go talk to some more harmless goofballs than him. Give himself time to process before he reads the rest of the story. 

There’s some part of him that wonders how cruel a cosmic joke can really be. There has to come a point when even the universe realizes it’s being tacky, right? His heart feels like a battered wineskin, overfull and sloshing and spilling. He knows when it was slashed and he’d done his stitching. He didn’t need this today, or ever.

What’s past is passed. Raphael might still have a chance, and nostalgia won’t be what saves her. Gerry would have tried even if he’d never seen this before.

Better it’s all here in front of him, actually, if he’s going to determine whether he really has.

  
  


_That’s when I realized I didn’t have any idea where I was._

_I’d gotten used to the blacklight, so when I realized it had gone completely pitch, I panicked. I couldn’t see the edges of the neon patterns stuck on the fake vats of toxic waste or the dripping handprints on all the guard railings or any of the glow-in-the-dark graffiti tags they used as signs to point the way through different obstacles. The one I found didn’t seem to be in any human language I’d ever thought existed. The arrow pointed up._

_As I kept walking forward, it started to turn. I could feel the ground curving, like I was scaling up a rounded tunnel wall. It didn’t feel like all the futuristic space travel stuff around the place had just become real. Nothing about the gravity changed, except maybe the way my stomach felt positioned inside me._

_I started to get this… aura — the migraine kind, not the psychic kind. The sensitivity of that, but none of the pain. I could swear I heard other people around, too. Like they were just around the corner, or behind me somewhere, but every time I saw a light in the corner of my eye, I couldn’t see the player it came from. The voices would disappear._

_I didn’t want to shout. Some part of me knew I would be found if I did, and if I was found… I didn’t know what that would mean. I wanted to find someone else first, before anything found me._

_I clutched my gun as if it could actually keep me safe. It was glowing neon green and made little_ pew _noises when you pulled the trigger, and I was holding it like it was Excalibur._

_It didn’t stop me getting shot. I saw the little green dot take place in the center of my chest before I even remembered that it was a part of me. The sound was louder this time, like some sort of celebration. I felt the shock take a crunching bite out of my sternum._

_I didn’t think anyone would hear me scream._

  
  
  


The side of his head burns. There’s a spark on his tongue, and he hates the Spiral.

  
  


_The minute I did, it all came back. The music, the obstacles, my friends. Everyone said my vest was on the fritz._

_I’m not an electrical engineer, but I built my own computer and I’ve taken apart plenty of electronics. I know what a good shock feels like. This wasn’t that._

_I dream about it now. Or, I don’t. I know it’s sleep paralysis, but I’ve never been very clear on whether those are_ dreams _or hallucinations. How awake do you have to be for it to stop counting? I feel wide awake. I can’t leave the lights on when I share a room with someone else, but I_ know _the lamps we have in our dorm don’t change colour like that. I know Danica would never buy LED bulbs just to mess with me and change them back out every morning. She’s energetic, not a sadist._

  
  


That _you_ know of.

  
  


_But the ceiling is always black when I wake up. There used to be the little slots of moonlight through the blinds, I could always see the smoke detector light, but not anymore. Just black, until I think maybe it’s purple, until I think maybe I’m blind, and then I see the blinking. Little flashing needles of red and green and magenta just popping on and off in the edge of my periphery, like our room still has a window._

_Just one at a time, sometimes two if I try too hard to follow it. The_ pew pew _sound never lines up with them. Sometimes I hear it long after I see, like a thundercrack right in my eardrum and nowhere else._

  
  


Of course. Of course it’s raining today, too.

  
  


_I’m starting to hear them over my shoulder in the daytime._

  
  


There are places where her pen dragged from the end of a letter in the middle of a word, into the margins. She had flinched twelve times while writing this that he can count.

  
  


_Did you know magenta’s not even a real colour? There’s no place for it on the spectrum. Our brains don’t like having green between purple and red, so they make up something new to cope with how uncomfortable it is. I used to think it was really fascinating that we could all just make up the same thing, because didn’t that make it real?_

_Now I have to wonder if we didn’t._

  
  


The door opens on the coattails of two quick knocks from the other side. Gerry lifts his head with a blank face as the feeling of being watched replaces the static-burn of confusion.

“Mr. Delano, good. You’re still here.” Elias takes a single step into the room, the door still open around him. “You aren’t stepping out to lunch with the others?”

Gerry holds up the paper in his hand. “Just reading a statement.”

“Oh, then I’m sure you’re more than happy to be interrupted.” Elias nods, folding his hands behind his back. “I think it’s about time you and I finally got the chance to talk.”

There’s something in his tone there, but Gerry can’t be bothered to parse it preemptively. “About?”

There’s something in his face, too. Nothing about it really changes, but then, nothing really has to.

“Your responsibilities as Archivist, namely. I thought we could go over them one more time, now that you’re finally so well rested.” He doesn’t so much as glance sideways at the open cot when he says it. Going great so far. “You _do_ remember what you agreed to when you signed your contract, don’t you?”

Gerry sets the papers down to cross his arms over the desk. Some part of him wants to be embarrassed by the fact that the answer is genuinely _no._ Is that what Elias wants from him now? An admission of something?

He settles for a shrug. “Don’t sleep on company time?”

Elias straightens his head, rocking a little on the balls of his feet. It’s a shift so small that anyone who wasn’t raised by Mary Keay might not have noticed it. Gerry grinds his teeth against the instinct to shrink under the way he stares.

“This isn’t a counseling center. It’s not a foster home, or a food shelter, or a private practice. You can’t _personally consult_ on every live statement that comes in here. You’re an Archivist, not an exorcist. Playing the hero doesn’t warrant overtime pay.”

So, the spy cams are extremely on. Good to know.

Not that Gerry didn’t know that much already. Part of that agreement he doesn’t remember a word of, most likely. Which Elias clearly knows, and is literally just taunting him over. Which seems kind of stupid, given that if Gerry is supposed to be afraid of him, he should at least make the threat a little clearer. Which Gerry is sure he’s very capable of when he wants to be, thus implying that he’s being this underwhelming on purpose. Which… well, Gerry doesn’t know what the hell comes after that yet, but it’s probably not going to go near as well as Elias probably wants Gerry to believe that he believes Gerry believes it will be.

This is almost certainly why Gertrude never wanted them to meet.

Gerry has no argument, but Elias is waiting for him to say something. To surrender, maybe, or rise up to the threat like it’s a challenge.

Mum’s been dead a while now, but Gerry knows how easy it is to emulate her. Of course Elias wouldn’t even bother with a ruse. This confrontation is purely about the expectation of appearances, about saying things to say them without successfully lying _or_ telling the truth. Elias is expecting Gerry to guess the role he wants him to play.

Well. He can’t be _fired_ if he guesses wrong.

“Is this my _first_ or _final_ warning?”

“Merely a reminder.” Elias nods again, and this time raises a brow. “I took you for a man of your word. Was I mistaken?”

Gerry fights to keep from sinking in his chair. It hits him with astounding clarity for the second time today that his boots are still on the floor under the edge of the cot. To take a real moment to be mortified by that would make his poker face even more useless than it already is.

That’s usually the role he assumes. Unbroken eye contact, at least, communicates his answer.

“Excellent.” Elias brings his hands around to clasp them in front of himself instead. “Is there anything you’d like to add before I leave you to it?”

Without looking away, Gerry reaches off to his right to search with his fingers for the plastic bag he’d left sitting there. He lifts it into eyeshot in front of him to shake it in offering.

“Werther’s?”

Elias smiles and steps out of the room.

The creeping feeling at the back of Gerry’s neck fades away into an ordinary chill. It takes everything he has not to hurl the bag of sweets across the room. It hits the desk with a half-hearted clatter before his forehead hits it with a _thunk._

What the hell is he supposed to do with that? What the hell _was_ that?

Is he supposed to keep it to himself, or does Elias expect him to tell Tim and Jon the way he’s told them everything else so far? Is he going to bother them for taking Raphael to the canteen? It’ll probably be just Gerry. If he sits on it to spite that expectation, is _that_ what Elias actually wants? Or is he banking on some inevitable break, and waiting to see how long it takes?

Gerry can’t tell if he’s being underestimated or what. He can’t tell yet if he should care, but now that he’s started thinking about it — yep, he’s already making a bigger deal out of it than he should give Elias the satisfaction of. Or is he?

Well, _this_ is definitely at least part of the result Elias wanted by pulling that. Gerry seriously hates it when _he’s_ the Vizzini in the scenario.

_Another_ knock shakes the silence of the room. Gerry can’t help the whining groan it draws out of him. He doesn’t lift his head from the desk, curling his arms around it like a cage to block out the building ache.

“What do you _want?”_ he half-shouts, turning his face to keep his breath from steaming against the wood. “Just come in, it’s open.”

It’s probably just Jon or Tim come to update him on Raphael’s general status. He doesn’t care if either of them judge him. Not like their opinion of him could go any further underground.

Gerry jumps upright at the sound of creaking wood directly behind him.

His chair doesn’t turn all the way around when he twists to look, trapped by the small space between the back of it and the yellow door taking up the plain wall that once was. Something moves in his periphery, too fast for him to identify as he spins back around — it vaults over the top of his desk with the speed of a tiger beetle, but he could swear it was a person crawling on all fours.

He would swear it, if his left ear wasn’t full of music. Michael is perched peacefully in the chair across from him, angled sideways to cross its long legs. Its hands are laced like it’s been waiting for Gerry to turn around all this time. Like it’s been waiting for whole minutes, hours, years. Patient-impatient face, a weary want for sympathy in the sepia-soaked photograph of his otherwise ordinary shape. The smile doesn’t match at all when it greets him.

“I never thought I would see you back in this place.”

Gerry’s teeth show on a scowl, tinfoil-ringing in his mouth. He lowers his head back down, his hand clasped palm-open over the part of it that’s still throbbing. “I’ve been touching base here for the past year. Don’t act so surprised.”

“Have you, now? I haven’t seen you since Michael started working here.”

For crying out loud. “For the last time, I’m not my father.”

Michael is unmoved. There’s a little unbothered scoff, as if Gerry is only pulling its leg for the fuck of it. “Blood is bones is someone’s ghost.”

“Slick verses,” Gerry says. “Still not him. You don’t know me.”

“Do you know you?” It smiles again, like a neighbour making small talk over the fence. “It’s written on your door, Delano.”

“Yeah, and no door in the world’s ever been guilty of false advertising.”

Michael laughs as if it’s not an insult. The sound echoes louder on Gerry’s left side, iron bells and polystyrene scrubbed together. Rage bubbles up inside him like it hasn’t in he can’t remember. He snatches Raphael’s statement off the desk.

“Come to gloat, then, have you?” Gerry lifts the papers to shake them. “This your handiwork?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” it lies. “Michael never played laser tag in his life.”

“Bull.” Gerry slaps the statement back down, his head falling back into both hands. “Let the poor girl get some fucking sleep.”

There is a belittling scoff from ahead. “You know what they say about hearing hoofbeats.”

Gerry drops his fists onto the desk. “I can’t name a single time it _wasn’t_ zebras.”

“Is your faith in yourself so unshakeable?”

Palm smacks on the wood. “What are you doing here, Michael? 

“I only wanted to listen to the symphony.” Its eyes flicker to the side of Gerry’s head in indication, grinning like his mother did when he affixed painted fractals on their wall. Gerry glares with so much acid that it trickles backwards down his throat.

“It’s jazz.”

Utter delight crosses Michael’s face like it’s an ordinary man with awful taste in music. It looks so harmless that Gerry could scream.

As soon as he thinks as much, Michael’s eyes go sad and narrow. It tilts its head to let its hair fall from the ponytail it was never in, cuttlefish colours in the shadow cast on its neck.

“You’re so angry,” it pouts. “Am I really this much a bother to you? You hardly know me enough to hate me yet.”

Knowing bait when he sees it doesn’t mean he never takes it. Sometimes the rise something wants out of him is cathartic enough that Gerry gives in for lack of anything else to take it out on, but Michael couldn’t know that about him. His reputation in this world can’t be _that_ precise. He’s either a name or a happenstance, and chaining himself to this place has stripped him thoroughly of both.

Michael’s very outline turns the space around it amber to a certain radius that Gerry can’t approximate. It looks like it’s trying to fit into a locket after being cut out from another time, willing the whole hammer into the space meant for the nail. It looks like a memory that only _wants_ to be one of Gerry’s, while knowing very well that it isn’t.

“Whatever you’re up to, it’s not going to work. I’m not falling for it.”

Michael’s eyes are too green for its face. “I’m not up to anything you haven’t already fallen for, Archivist.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“I wasn’t talking to _you._ _”_

“Then get _out.”_ The demand leaves as a plea. “Just leave me alone. Leave that girl _alone,_ find something else to ruin besides my day.”

“Your day must mean everything to you,” Michael observes. “I’m sorry for ruining it. I only wanted to see how you were doing.”

This again. That _tone._ “No, you’re not, and no, you _didn’t._ You’re terrible at this, you understand that? You’re not _scaring me_ by talking down to me like it’s Sunday dinner, you’re just _pissing me off.”_

Michael lets itself look wounded, like a parent hearing for the first time that their child wishes they had never been born. Gerry’s heart is in his mouth, and he bites down on it.

“Now that’s not very fair. I’ve only ever tried to look out for you. You are the one who chose not to listen, and now look at what you’ve done.”

“And _what_ have I done!” Would he be raising his voice at Michael if he hadn’t already been on edge? If his head hadn’t already been on fractalfire, if he hadn’t already been Vizzini today? “What exactly are you _scolding_ me for?”

“I tried to warn you about her,” Michael says, guiltlessly frank before it hardens. “And now here you are in her seat.”

Gerry sighs at that. “Well, it’s better than her being in it, isn’t it?”

“The only good Archivist is a dead one.”

For whatever reason, that makes Gerry settle back in his chair. He can still feel his pulse beating at the walls of his throat, but it’s not out of anger.

Michael smiles pleasantly at him as he winds himself down, looking for all the world like it’s sitting in the front row at a piano recital. Gerry doesn’t know if he would be quite so sick about that if the statement on his desk didn’t make him feel more like Inigo Montoya, checking for the sixth finger on the right hand of everyone he meets.

“Did you come here for the girl?”

“Oh, no need. You’re bright enough a beacon on your own.” Again with the pride and joy. “Just look at you. You don’t even know who you are. I only wanted to tell you that you should start keeping track.”

“Stop acting like you care,” Gerry snaps. He wishes it didn’t sound so mopey.

“You make so many assumptions, Delano. Of course I care.”

“Then get out of my office when I ask you to.”

The flash of anger in Michael’s eyes looks almost human. “So many years, Archivist, and still the very same. Do you imagine Michael still takes orders from you?”

Gerry stands up so fast that his vision grows mould in a time-lapse, bright nothings pressed to the sepia seep of Michael’s outline. The breath in his lungs plummets down like a fallen log over the roaring falls of his blood racing down into his legs, and then his elbows are gripped tightly in Michael’s hands.

They don’t feel like the hands they look like. It’s wet-leather bonevice digging soreness into his arms, from mounds of clayflesh that shouldn’t be able to move like fingers. Gerry exclaims in disgust and staggers back, throwing his arms out to strike Michael’s away from him, pointing warningly with the hand not gripping the desk’s edge.

_“Don’t_ touch me.”

Michael retreats like it knows how to be sorry. It speaks like it’s happy that it never will. “Shall I let you fall next time?”

_“Yes,”_ Gerry hisses. “Don’t you _ever_ touch me again.”

The audacity it must take to laugh at him. “Very well. Just don’t blame me for your next concussion.”

Gerry clutches at his chest, more enraged at the fact that his breathing is so quick now that he can’t control it. Who the hell decided that today was ‘let’s kick Gerry’s leg under the table and see how long it takes him to throw a tantrum’ day? He needs it to end. His heart is in his mouth and he needs it to stop beating so fast.

“Are you done?” he pants, winded. “Have you helped enough yet, can you finally just _go?”_

There is no disheartened sigh this time before it titters to itself with drunken slowness, drifting backwards towards the yellow door. It’s where the real door used to be now, and it stays bright even when Michael stands amber right in front of it. “If you’re so eager to be rid of me.”

Gerry blurts it out before he can think twice about it. “Wait.”

In place of a taunt, Michael simply turns its head. The expectant look on its face must count for something. Gerry’s chest is pounding too hard to let him regret the question before it’s asked.

“What do I have to do to get you to leave her alone?”

Now Michael looks at him like he’s brought home bad marks on a spelling test. “You’ll have to start asking smarter questions than that, Archivist. Good luck.”

It leaves like it will be back tomorrow. Gerry’s legs almost buckle with dreadrelief, his hand slipping on the edge of the desk. The music in his ear is gone now, and for that it’s almost dizzier, but at least he’s alone again. The only eye on the back of his neck is the one he’d paid to have put there, and the only sound in the room is his own breath as he tries to catch it.

Gerry has never been so thankful that Gertrude bought him this stupid cot. It doesn’t matter to him that she’d only done it so he wouldn’t _malfunction_ out in the field because at least it’s here and it’s right in reach and he’s _this close_ to crumpling back onto it and _son of a bitch, can people stop knocking on his door!_

He’s barely bent a knee over the edge when the sound shatters his intentions. There’s no earthly _point_ in forcing his frustration into silence for the convenience of whoever’s on the other side, a strained noise of sheer exhaustion fighting past his teeth as he catches himself from falling forward. He storms to the door himself this time to fling it open with a miserable scowl, his hand still fisted in his shirt.

“Whoa!” Tim holds up his hands in alarm; there’s a paper baggie held in one of them. His entire demeanor changes in an instant. “Whoa, wait. What the hell happened, are you alright?”

Gerry holds up a hand when Tim’s free one seems to be headed for his elbow, reluctant still to lean into the doorframe for support. “Fine.”

“Nuh-uh,” Tim tuts. “If you think you can break rule number one just because you wrote it, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Gerry squints at him to find the double entendre in his phrasing. Tim just looks bewildered and concerned, his eyes bouncing between Gerry’s face and the way he knows his chest is moving. 

“I need you to help me move my desk,” Gerry says when he can locate a clear, lowered voice. “And after that, I’m going back to sleep.”

“O…kay,” Tim says, skeptical. “I’m sorry, just— we weren’t gone _that_ long. _Why_ do you look like you just went ten rounds with Fezzik?”

Gerry’s eyes snap shut with his jaw. He clutches the doorknob in a tight fist and wills himself to meditate on the worth of banter when he’s this tired. 

“Desk,” he says again. “Sleep. Do Not Disturb. That’s it.”

“But we _will_ know _why_ this is a thing eventually, right? Pencil it in for our weekly briefing?”

“Desk,” Gerry repeats. “Please.”

Tim’s shoulders drop with the subject. “Alright, yeah. Where do you want it?”

Gerry moves to allow Tim into the office, considering the very few options he actually has here. The room isn’t so large that he can just move it wherever he wants, and it’ll feel weird if his seat isn’t still facing the door.

“Away from the wall,” he decides. “It was boxing me in.”

“You got it.”

The paper baggie is set down on the cot before Gerry makes his way back to it, and he only narrowly manages to avoid squishing it in his collapse. Immediately, almost, there’s relief. “Is Jon back?”

“Yup,” Tim agrees, the syllable strained with the effort of getting the very corner of the desk up out of the way it’s sunk into the carpet over probably decades of staying rooted. “He shelled out for that sandwich that you’d better eat, by the way. You should have seen him fussing, it was unparalleled.”

Gerry wets his lips, face half-buried in the pillow. “Raphael?”

“Fed, watered, and shipped off home in a lovely cab that Jon _also_ offered to pay for. Is this out far enough?”

Gerry gives him a thumbs up without opening his eyes. He hears Tim move some papers on the desk and shuffle through them.

“This her statement here? And the tape?”

“Mmf.”

“Mind if I bring it out there to show him?”

“Mrrgh.”

“Awesome.” The _pat_ of an idle hand against the desk. “Good talk, Ger.”

Footsteps, finally. Gerry holds his breath for a second in anticipation for the rush of relief he’s _pretty_ sure he’s given his pound of flesh for, only to lose his grip on it when his blanket comes down over his side in a crumpled heap.

“Get some rest,” are the last words before his door is finally shut again, and Gerry has the chance to properly regret the last solid hour of his life.

The last question he’d asked Michael replays in his head as it gets used to having blood in it again. Was this entire string of encounters just him artfully plating his vulnerabilities for them to be judged like he’s on g-ddamn _MasterChef?_ He isn’t built for this. Who let him _do_ this?

He should have just asked Michael whether the Werther’s are actually poisoned. It’s not like it would have told the truth anyway.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: dissociation; manipulation; gaslighting; references to past abuse; exploitation of past abuse; an uncomfortable arm grab (largely just because michael's hands are bad but still); spiral-typical unreality; bit of a POTS attack at the end**
> 
> _"houndwarren" - pursued relentlessly down a network of rabbit holes, or a dense, labyrinthine building_
> 
>   
> \+ [if you are at all confused by my interpretation of michael, check this out](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/630659509547892736/)!  
> \+ and [here is a raphael reference](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/657438841426280450/773258613716287498/r1.png) using [this picrew](https://picrew.me/image_maker/257476)!
> 
> [ [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) | [tumblr](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/) | [GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#) ]
> 
> ON DECK: **WINGSTART**  
>  i.e., a look into jon's perspective on the state of the archives, and the plan going forward.


	4. WINGSTART

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m still thinking about Raphael’s statement,” Jon admits. “The recording, the— the digital interface being so distorted by whatever she was about to say, and the notion that it’s supposed to indicate legitimacy.”
> 
> The only thing about Gerry that moves for a moment is the stud pinned under the right side of his lower lip. Then he angles himself forward, comfortably focused.
> 
> “Tell me what you’re thinking, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack** : [life is confusing - autoheart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVOAgsE8z5A)
> 
> sorry for the delay! at least this chapter is finally within the 5-7k range, whew.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


Visiting the library before settling in for work every day has become increasingly more difficult since adding another flight of stairs into the mix. 

Jon doesn’t plan on giving it up just yet. Routine is routine, and he would prefer to adjust how often he does it than remove it from his day entirely. It’s one of the only points of consistency he’s managed to maintain in this place, and it’s the closest thing to physical therapy he’s kept up with since he was twenty-three. He needs it, frankly — to wake himself up, to exercise his knee, to have an extra book on hand just in case he finishes his tasks early and is too exhausted to go _back_ up and down the stairs in the middle of the day for something else to keep himself busy.

That was the defense that he’d rehearsed in his head the first time he was late in getting down to the basement. That, plus a carefully worded apology to cushion his request that he be allowed a little extra time in the mornings. Before he could even reach the end of it, Gerry had cut him off with explicit permission. Insistence, even, that he stop worrying about whether he was going to get into trouble for being ten minutes behind for a job that _still_ isn’t real, no matter how long he spends treating it like it is.

Jon can’t say it was the most comfortable thing to accept, but he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. He likes the library. It’s impeccably organised.

The one thing that bothers him about it is how often he needs things off the highest shelves. Climbing ladders has never been his favourite activity, even before he’d rendered himself permanently canted to the right. His dadima’s voice rings in his ear every time his hand curls around a maple rung — _Jon, be careful. Hold on as tightly as you can. I can’t have you falling._

The ladders in the library here roll on wheels. The way they secure to the poles at the top of each shelf should comfort him, he thinks. It doesn’t, really. So there’s that, and he hates _touching_ them where people’s shoes have been. All in all, hates ladders. Hates them.

And so it bothers him a great deal when the book he’d set out to find today is nowhere to be seen below the furthest reach of his arm.

Or perhaps not a _great_ deal. But enough that he lets out a sigh with such force that the library assistant who is already _on_ the nearest ladder turns to look at him.

“Oh! Um, trouble finding what you’re looking for?”

“To my utter torment,” Jon agrees, crossing his arms. He glances up at the ladder, past the assistant’s shoulder to squint at the shelves behind him.

The assistant laughs, high and pleasant. “Well, maybe it’s just up here. Do you know the author’s name, or— or the title?” He turns to face the shelf again, craning his head to scan the spines before he’s even given a prompt.

It takes Jon a blank moment to remember the words that had away from him when he’d shaken his focus with conversation. “Willin. Melvyn Willin, with— with a ‘y’ in the first name. The book is titled—”

_“‘Gh…osts Caught On Film?’”_ The assistant asks, half-bent off the side of the ladder with an arm outstretched to trace words with a pointed finger. _“‘Photographs of the Paranormal…?’”_

“Yes!” Jon throws his hands up in small celebration, cane swinging forward. “That’s the one, yes. Could you please pass that down to me?”

“Sure thing! Oh, there’s actually three volumes here, um… _‘Monsters Caught On Film,’_ which—” Another short, pleasant laugh. “Which sounds like _loads_ of fun. A-And then just _‘The Paranormal,’_ also caught on film. Do you want those, too, while I’m at it, or are we limited to _specifically_ ghosts? What’s the mood for today?”

Jon thinks for a moment, and grumbles a little noise of confirmation. “I could do with some variety, I think, yes. But could you grab them quickly, the— the way you’re leaning is making me nervous.”

“Oh!” Quickly, the assistant straightens back up on the ladder and uses his hands to push the entire structure along the shelf closer to the Willin books. He’s a rather large person, tall and wide around the middle in ways Jon is not, and Jon fears often enough that if _he_ leans too far off the side of one of these, he’ll take down the entire stack.

“Sorry about that,” the assistant laughs again, pinching all three books together to pull from the shelf at once. He bashfully shakes his other hand through his dark curls, held back with a thin elastic headband. “You forget how dangerous it is when you’re up here all the time. Here you are, now.”

Jon reaches up to take the books as fast as he can, eager to see the man put at least _one_ hand back on the ladder. Reckless. Jon doesn’t say as much, of course. He swivels around to lean back against the shelf and study the books’ covers once it’s safe to. Thin, pithy things they are, but they’ll do.

“Alright?”

Jon startles away from the shelf. “Oh, yes. Right, ah— Yes, thank you.”

Without further ado, he straightens up to make way to the front desk, books tucked close to his chest. He hears the stock farewell from over his shoulder and decides to let the assistant have the final word, so they don’t get stuck in some awkward loop in the obligatory endeavour to be polite.

This is where he has to really take his time. Luckily, there’s never anyone else in the second stairwell when he has to pause at the landing and stretch his leg. It’s not so bad some days, though he can’t say he doesn’t wish there was a lift in this place. He’s never had the courage to put in a complaint about it on his own behalf, figuring it easier to just train himself to put up with it. Maybe someday, if this whole trek to the Archives gets too much.

Gerry and Tim are both sitting in the area behind the desk units, sorting papers into piles on the longer table. Gerry looks up at him first, the motion of which catches Tim’s attention before the sound of Jon’s footsteps do. Still, Tim is the first to greet him.

“Howdy,” he says. “Find a cool prize in your library cereal this morning?”

“That one was terrible.” Gerry’s face falls with concern. Tim swats his elbow with a folder.

“I did, actually.” Jon crosses over to the table to sling his bag up onto it, stepping back to pull one of the desk chairs over and sit. He spreads his books out in display, turning the covers so they can be read.

“I keep thinking about Raphael’s statement. The— The recording, and how it didn’t capture.”

“What about it?” Gerry asks. “You heard it yourself, what more do you need?”

“I just— I don’t understand where that leaves all… this?” Jon gestures with both hands. “Things we’ve never even thought to consider possible are apparently real now, and they can’t be caught on tape. Fact. So, where does that place all of these other alleged phenomena that so many claim to have proof of? Does this _further prove_ that it’s all poppycock, or _can_ these things exist independently from the Powers? Do the Powers cancel them out, o-or have they actually been responsible for them the entire time, a-and we simply had no idea how to connect those dots?”

Gerry leans his elbows on the table, rubbing his eyes. “It’s hardly ten in the morning, Jon.”

“I’m aware.” Jon crosses his arms. “I was asked what I brought down from the library, so I’m explaining why it was on my mind. You don’t have to answer right this second.”

“If I don’t, you’ll drive yourself up the wall until I do.” Gerry sits back again with a deep breath. Jon shuffles in his seat, eyes darting away.

“…Well, _yes,_ but—” He clears his throat. “You’re clearly not a morning person.”

Gerry narrows his eyes, but there’s no heat in it. Jon understands fatigue, is all. The way Tim had reported it, something had gone quite obviously wrong after Raphael gave her statement, and Gerry had been quiet the next time Jon saw him. Even now, he looks like he’s still got somewhat of a headache.

“Since when do you believe in ghosts?” Tim picks up the first book in the lineup, flipping it over to read the back. “Would you actually buy it if he said this was all real, or are you just looking to bicker about something?”

“I don’t _bicker,”_ Jon corrects. “I _debate.”_

Tim stares at him for a beat before he clicks his tongue. “I don’t know, Jon, I’ve seen you bicker with Randall upstairs plenty.”

“Because _Randall_ doesn’t know how to put up a good argument.” Jon glares for a moment before he gestures again to the mess of papers and books on the table. “How else are we supposed to arrive at a truth, _a-any_ truth?”

Tim might find it easier to just take Gerry’s word at face value, but it goes against Jon’s very nature to not _try_ and uncover the twelve other answers to every question asked. Why _couldn’t_ they just conduct themselves like civilized Jews and have a healthy debate? Goyim notwithstanding. It’s about the _approach._

Gerry reaches out to take _Ghosts Caught On Film_ out of Tim’s hand and flip through it. He doesn’t look up when he says, “Most of this might be phony, but there’s grounds for ghosts.”

Jon sits forward. “Have _you_ ever seen one?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “All the time.”

Tim’s head recoils back in an exaggerated start. “What, like in a _Sixth Sense,_ _‘I see dead people’_ sort of way, or are we talking more like _Ghostbusters_ style?”

“In a _complete perversion of the natural lifespan_ sort of way.” Gerry snaps the book shut and flings it lamely back down onto the table. “People have used the End to justify all sorts of means.”

It takes a second for his emphasis to click. Jon scoots forward again to reach for the book himself now, thumbing through the pictures. 

“So, then, ghosts as a concept are of the End?”

Gerry shrugs. “What I’ve got experience with always was.”

Jon starts over at the front of the book when he reaches the back too quickly. “Would they— a-and things like them, I suppose— Would they have _inspired_ the idea of ghosts, or do you think they’re just the next closest thing?”

“I can’t answer that.” Gerry shakes his head. “You’re just reframing the chicken and the egg.”

Jon frowns. “You’re the one who says you grew up studying all of this. You _just_ said you see ghosts ‘all the time.’”

Gerry’s face is flat. “That doesn’t mean I’ve seen everything.”

“Didn’t you say something similar to this about vampires a while back?” Tim speaks up like he’s been storing the question for the proper moment. He taps the cover of _Monsters Caught On Film._ “How they’re, like… people-shaped, and they _walk the night_ and whatever, but they’ve got a massive, nasty _flesh proboscis_ where most everybody pictures pointy fangs?”

Jon grimaces at the word choice. Gerry nods, turning his head a bit towards Tim without raising his eyes.

“Easier to call them vampires than explain the whole taxonomy just for the sake of accuracy that might not even _be_ all that accurate to begin with. Everybody knows what a vampire is. Thing tears out your throat and guzzles all your blood, you might as well _just_ call it what it looks like.” Gerry rests his elbows on the table, catching his chin in the net of his laced fingers. “You’ll have to fight less to get someone to run.”

Tim nods, rocking back in his chair. Jon chews his lip, fingers drumming on the cover of the book nearest to him.

“What Power would those be analogous with?” Jon asks. “If it feeds on human blood, wouldn’t that be the… uh—”

“No singular one.” Gerry pushes a hand through his hair, anchoring his fingers in it to prop his head up. “I keep telling you, Smirke’s list is too rigid to make any real sense. It’s a blueprint, not the house you’re living in.”

Jon readjusts in his chair, sitting further back in it to draw himself closer to the table by his heels. “I understand you’ve said that, yes. But wouldn’t it benefit us to at least be able to understand which direction certain trends might point in? So that we can better recognize that blend, that— that _overlap_ in involvement, and therefore narrow down exactly what we might be looking at?”

“Yeah, ‘course.” Gerry crosses his arms again, tipping his head. His eyes are very tired. “We’ll get around to that once we weed out the duds.”

Jon looks around at the statements on the table, his mouth downturned with discontent. “Right. Yes.”

“Gonna help us, then, or what?” Tim has started flipping through another folder. Jon watches as he leafs through the pages with _obviously_ minimal reading before tossing it into the larger pile to the right of them. He knows the process they’re using to sort through them right now — he’s been using it, too, since Gerry brought in the instructions — but he’s had his doubts for days.

Jon’s eyes bounce between the pile and his books, weighing two equally apposite options. Gerry’s eyes stay on him, heavy enough that he’s not surprised when he looks back up to meet them.

“I’m still thinking about Raphael’s statement,” Jon admits. “The recording, the— the digital interface being so _distorted_ by whatever she was about to say, and the notion that it’s supposed to indicate legitimacy.”

The only thing about Gerry that moves for a moment is the stud pinned under the right side of his lower lip. Then he angles himself forward, comfortably focused.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, then.” 

He doesn’t say it angrily, or impatiently, or like he doesn’t want to hear it. Jon lets out a deep breath and reaches into his bag to dig around in the front pockets.

“I wish you’d taken a longer recording.” Jon retrieves his phone to look for the file he’d had Gerry send him before he deleted it from his own. “Or that we had access to more like it. I’m curious as to _why_ it even happens, how— how am I to take it as proof of something so broad when I don’t even know what causes it?”

Gerry sighs now, sniffing as he sits back in his chair again. “It’s just one of those things, I think. It’s like vampires and ghosts, probably, where the movies are about ninety percent on their logic, just a little off with what they credit.”

“But those are movies,” Jon says. “I’m talking about… _this._ Have you ever seen it anywhere that you didn’t try to capture yourself?”

Gerry nods. “Sometimes I lurk around the paranormal side of YouTube.”

“Of course you do,” Tim notes under his breath.

“Like you’ve never.” Gerry glances sideways without looking up at Tim’s face, still neutral as anything. Jon catches Tim’s frown before he looks down to smooth a thumb over the fuchsia polish on his fingernails.

“More just for fun, honestly,” Gerry resumes. “But I’ve seen a few things that were too messed up to have been manufactured. Somebody talking about a major chunk of something they had to cut out from the feed, if they seem really shaken up about it.”

Jon inclines his head a bit, shaking it slowly. “And you don’t think they couldn’t be just… acting?”

“Sure I do. They could be.” Gerry shrugs. “Or they could not. Not like I can get in there and fix it once it’s already happened.”

“Maybe we should just check out the suggested videos to find another damn lead,” Tim snorts. “We might have more luck with that than we’re having with all this mess.”

Jon scoffs. “I’d honestly just like to get into contact with someone who operates in that sphere and compare notes.”

The moment after he says it, his eyes snap down to the edge of the table. No… No, that wouldn’t make any sense. And he could never— Absolutely not. This can’t be worth _that_ much effort. It’s just a silly personal hangup that Gerry will almost certainly get annoyed with sooner or later. He’ll most likely turn up with more evidence as if by magic the way he walked in with the key to how Gertrude organized her files, and by then there may be more pressing matters to worry about.

“Alright, Jon,” Tim sighs. “Out with it. What’s the war flashback face for?”

Jon sits back; he’d leaned his mouth against his curled knuckles to think, absorbed in the conflict. “Oh, um— Nothing, it’s nothing.”

Tim makes an agitated buzzer sound. “Well, that was a lie. So, do it again.”

Jon flounders while Gerry snickers silently into his hands. “It’s not— Really, it’s completely asinine, just forget it.”

He reaches out for his books to stack them and shove them off to the side, reaching for a nearby folder. Papers hit the desk as Tim drags his chair forward to lean closer, and Jon looks up at almost the precise moment that Gerry drops his hands to do the same. He feels remarkably cornered for someone still seated at the more open side of the table. It doesn’t take more than a second or two of glancing frantically between them for him to crack, pulling his glasses off to rub at his eyes.

“Fine! Fine, I’ll give.” He resituates his glasses, fingers flicking up to rearrange how his hair lays at the sides of his head. “G-d, you’re like _vultures.”_

“Can’t imagine what it must be if you’re still stalling,” Gerry says.

“I’m not—” Fine, _enough._ One last disgruntled sigh. “I do know someone in the industry, is all.”

Tim raises a brow. “You’re friendly with the YouTube community?”

“No, not YouTube, um— I’m not sure if you’re familiar with _What The Ghost?”_ Jon clears his throat. “It’s a podcast. The host and I are— um. Acquainted.”

“Well, the way you said _that_ means it’s also a lie, but we’ll get to that.” Tim responds to the glare Jon gives him with unbothered neutrality.

“You think she might have contacts?” Gerry asks. His brand of neutral expressions feels far less imposing, somehow. “I’ve heard a few episodes of that. It’s just a talk show, so I’m assuming you don’t think she’s caught anything herself.”

Jon nods at him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in her network has something we could work with.”

“You mean something _you_ could work with,” Tim intones. “Because this seems like a ‘you’ pursuit.”

“No, I think he’s got a point.” Gerry straightens up to stretch backwards, a series of pops resounding from his spine. “We might as well look into this sort of thing, too. Especially if it means everybody gets on the same wavelength.”

Gerry relaxes again, carding his hair back with both hands to push it back over his shoulders as he looks back over to Jon. “Why don’t you give her a ring and see what you can get out of her?”

The air in Jon’s lungs solidifies into a sharp stone. He coughs against the feeling of instinctive refusal, reaching into his bag for the water bottle he keeps. If it’s seamless, they won’t know a kneejerk from an awkward inhalation.

Or, maybe they will. They’re both staring at him again, Tim with wordless assumption and Gerry with nothing terribly readable. 

“Sorry,” he rasps. “Wrong pipe. Um— Yes, I-I’ll reach out to her, at… some point.”

“I say get it over with.” Tim shuts off his phone screen to stick it back in his pocket — when had he taken that out? “You’ll have plenty of time to work up the nerve during the afternoon.”

What? “What about this afternoon?”

Tim snaps his fingers. “I thought we told you? It’s our first creepy critter crawl today! I’m ecstatic. Are you ecstatic, Ger?”

“We’re heading to the Natural History Museum,” Gerry fills in. Now it’s a bit more clear that he’s avoiding looking at Tim on purpose. “To look around at the skins and all. Find if there’s any plants hanging about.”

_“Love_ a good old fashioned stuffed animal,” Tim nods. “Very excited to box a real, fake, undead kangaroo. I have a really strong feeling this is my chance.”

Jon feels something sink in his chest. “Why the Natural History Museum?”

“To check it off the list first,” Gerry shrugs. “Got a few taxidermy shops we want to hit, too, but the museums are going to be more crowded by default.”

“Then you shouldn’t wait for the afternoon.” Jon checks his watch. “If you want to avoid any school groups, especially, it’s actually best if you start out right around now. I’d suggest a cab over the bus, though, so if you go with that you have a few more minutes. It’s worth the few extra pounds to skip the walking, especially in this weather.”

Again with the staring. Jon glares back instead of withering, but the honest curiosity in Gerry’s face and sheer delight in Tim’s makes for a quick surrender.

“I used to work there.”

“Learning more and more about you every day.” Tim flashes him a smile as he stands up from the table, stretching his arms back and forth. He drops his hands onto his hips with a satisfied sigh, turning his focus down to Gerry. “Ready, then?”

Gerry glances around the table with a twisted mouth, piercing wiggling again. He moves around a few papers with no apparent objective in mind, before he glances back across the table at Jon.

“Think you’re fine to hold down the fort?”

Jon considers this genuinely, studying the table. “Quite honestly? I’d really rather redo all of _this_ from the top anyway. So, yes. By all means, go on your— Um…”

“Creepy critter crawl,” Tim interjects, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

“Yes, that.” Jon sniffs, sitting up in his chair. He doesn’t feel comfortable reaching for anything until he has this table all to himself. “The mammals exhibit is a left turn from the Cromwell entrance and the Queen’s Gate entrance both, just across from the dinosaurs.”

Gerry gives him a quick smile before he stands. Jon looks up again at the sound of both of his hands hitting the table again as he catches himself from a stumble. Tim stops in his tracks for a moment, somewhere shy of reaching before Gerry waves him off. Jon exchanges a glance with Tim before they both settle for shrugging.

As they approach the door, Jon hears softer tones behind him.

“Sure you’re up to this today?”

“If you’re going to fuss, you can stay here.”

“Fair enough! Off we go.” Tim raises his voice over his shoulder. “Best of luck, Jon! Don’t burn the place down.”

“But—” But what? Jon has no actual idea what he was planning to say to that, other than perhaps that he actually doesn’t want to be left here entirely alone, but the time for that has come and passed. He really hopes they take the cab.

Finally, though, silence. He can finally clear this table and start over.

Some part of that idea makes him nervous. Being left alone here is daunting, and he wishes he’d given himself more time to prepare. Jon doesn’t even know if he’s going to fix it _correctly_ without Gerry punching holes in his judgment the minute he goes over it, even though he’d brought in that key.

The secret to Gertrude’s filing process is almost unbearably simplistic: if the first page of the statement has a thinly bent corner, then it’s got some sort of true connection to the Powers. From there, the second page being flipped upside down indicates that there were no reliable leads. Jon had questioned about any that might simply lack a second page, only for Gerry to say, _‘trust me, anyone who comes in here is going to end up with at least three.’_

At the time, it felt oddly specific. At least three, always? It should have helped him to feel more secure in counting out the ones that had less, but it really just raised more questions.

He has _never_ felt satisfied just locating a deliberately subtle bent corner and leaving it at that. They’ve found at least three by now, all of which Jon has insisted upon reading immediately. Tim had made faces all through the one he found. Gerry never skimmed past the first pages when they were passed over for him to check.

Jon couldn’t understand it. He understands why they all agreed to get rid of the obsolete first before diving into what’s left, but the sheer disproportion makes him want to take the time to go through them _now._

The way he finds himself thinking now is uncomfortable. He doesn’t like how often he’s found himself erring on the side of _but what if we’re missing something and by writing it off, we’re losing a crucial piece?_ Not even because it implies belief — he’s always believed, just working here this long means it would be foolish not to — but because if he’s right, then they’ll have to do this all over again to unbury whatever it is they’d overlooked.

Without Gerry here as a guideline, all he has are his own notes. They don’t feel near substantial enough, given their admitted brevity. Gerry seems, at times, to be so possessing of broad-scope knowledge that he forgets what others do and don’t know, too. No story of his ever seems to be told to completion.

It’s less than an hour before Jon sorts through the entire table. The tall pile of rejected statements has been split into experimental categories; ghosts, witches, aliens, so on. He looks over their remaining heights and he _knows_ he’s meant to pack them away again, put them off to the side to be shoved into the space they’d made at the back of the Archives for clutter, but—

He’ll leave them be for now. Decide later, maybe, after rehearsing how to ask again that they come up with a stronger system than just deconstructing Gertrude’s.

The next box on the shelf they’ve been taking from is overfull. It takes some wrestling to heft it into his arms, his cane hooked uncomfortably over the bend of his elbow as he staggers back from the shelf. When two moths flutter out from behind it to circle in front of his face, he nearly topples backwards in his startle.

Perfect. Honestly, if he finds _actual holes_ in any of these statements, he’s going to start throwing things.

There’s not enough room on the table for all of this after the modified piles he’s made. He hesitates for a moment before crossing over to where they’d hidden the verified ones.

When footsteps enter the room, Jon can’t see past the table from his spot on the floor. The person must not be able to see him, either, given the cautious, _“Hello?”_ they sing from the doorway.

Jon mutters to himself under his breath, pushing papers aside with both hands to clear a path to drag himself to the edge of the table enough that he can poke his head around the nearest leg, lifting an arm to wave.

“Down here,” he calls. “Can I help you?”

“Oh!” the woman chirps. “You’re on the floor.”

“I am that, yes.” Jon squints at her, scooting to sit up more and get a better look. “You have a box.”

“Do indeed!” The box is promptly placed on an empty desk in the bullpen. Hands free, she places them on her hips and tilts her head at him, the freckles in her brown skin visible from here. “This might be worse than Tim led me to believe.”

“Oh, Tim?” Jon sits up, hanging onto the table for balance. “I didn’t know he spoke to people. If you’re looking for him, I’m afraid he left the office not too long ago.”

She grins, and points finger guns at him. “Well aware, not to worry. I knew he was going to be out for a while this afternoon, I thought I’d surprise him.”

“Surprise him with…?”

She gestures with both arms, turning to glance at the box she’d set down. “I went ahead and finally got myself transferred down here.” And back to him on the floor, her thick brows pulling with mild concern. “From the looks of it, I came just in time. You need a hand?”

Jon glances between her and the box behind her, a skittering feeling crawling up from his stomach. “Sorry, hold on. You just… got _yourself_ transferred? Why?”

“Tim asked me to a while back.” She crosses her arms, shrugging a shoulder. “Told him ‘no’ at first, but… it’s been bothering me more and more, the longer I put it off. G-d, they really just left you here with all this alone? I could kill him.”

The most Jon can give her to that is a helpless shrug while he gathers his thoughts. What if this woman is just one of those people looking to lurk around in the Archives that he’s supposed to be looking out for? Is he supposed to fend her off? Welcome her? Interrogate her? Knowing Tim would be a terrible ruse if it weren’t true. Either she does, or she just expects to be gone before he and Gerry get back, which — she looks like she’s settling in, so that probably isn’t it. Still, he can’t help feeling as though he’s found himself on the set of a Stranger Danger PSA.

He might as well pull a Werther’s and test the waters.

“If you’re here to steal the secrets of the Archives, I’ll have to warn you that it’s a lost cause.” 

She winces in sympathy. “That bad, huh?”

…Sincere enough. Jon gives her a withering look as she steps over to the table to inspect the piles, one tight, blonde braid falling over her shoulder. He stares at her as she pulls a file from the top of the ‘haunted objects’ section.

“I’m Sasha, by the way.” She flips through the folder, nose wrinkling almost immediately before she snaps it shut again. “I understand why Tim might not have mentioned me, considering this place is apparently fraught with all sorts of sinister magicks.”

Sasha… Jon frowns at himself for never remembering the names of anyone outside of a four desk radius in his own department. He’s _sure_ he’s seen her before, but — well, prosopagnosia never sleeps. He’s crossed paths with the library assistant from earlier before, too, but that hasn’t made them friends.

“Right, yes. Oh, um— I-I’m sorry, I would stand up and greet you, but… well.” He looks down at his outstretched left leg, his hand latched over his knee to rub his thumb into the tendon lining the inside. “I knew the risks when I got down here. I’m afraid I won’t be getting up for the next give or take three hours.”

“Awfully brave,” Sasha says. She steps around the papers on the floor, then, to lower herself down in an empty space beside him. “Take it you’re Jon, then?”

Jon’s forehead creases. “He’s mentioned _me?”_

Sasha scrutinizes the paper spread before she selects one. “No, actually, Elias did.”

Oh, great. “And he… just _sent_ you down here? I thought he’d been letting Gerry choose his own assistants. I can’t imagine just suddenly _gaining one_ while he’s out is going to bode well. So you know.”

“You know, honestly? I really don’t care so much about that.” Sasha drops the folder down onto her lap. “I’m mostly going by what Tim told me.”

“Which was?”

Sasha shrugs. “That… something’s going on here. Something important. Is that what you think, too, after being here yourself?”

Jon thinks for a moment on that. “It’s… I mean, I’m inclined to, yes. But every question I ask just seems about as effective as decapitating a hydra.”

He crosses his arms, slumping against the leg of the table. It slides with his weight and he flails to catch himself, paper slipping under his hand. He hears Sasha’s muffled snort as he scrambles to push his glasses up, face burning.

She doesn’t comment on it verbally, at least. After a moment, she claps her hands together. “Well, I can only assume all this is just you trying to figure it out for yourself. What are we doing, then?”

“Oh, um…” Jon chews his lip, glancing around. “I’m going through the statements trying to find the real ones. A-Allegedly real, according to Gertrude’s old process, which… Well, frankly, I’m not having the easiest time. It seems just about _all_ of them were deemed obsolete, save a few. I’m not sure whether I want more of those to be potentially true, or if I want to focus on the ones that supposedly are and try to pick them apart with a particular… philosophy, in mind.”

Sasha’s brow pulls. “What exactly do you mean by ‘real?’ I mean… I’ve worked with Artefact Storage, I’ve seen some… _things._ But how can you actually determine that just by reading them?”

Jon starts to open his mouth and fish for an explanation, before it strikes him that there may be a better way. He leans over to snag his phone up off a stack of folders to open up his voice recorder application.

“Alright, so… hear me out for just one moment. I think I have a way to get you on board without the complicated prelude, which— which I think you’d still be better off getting from Gerry anyway, as I’m still wrapping my head around it myself. But what I’m about to show you feels like its own phenomenon to me right now, and I could use a second opinion from someone more objectively— well, objective.”

He swivels around to find where he’d put the verified statements, nabbing the one off the top. The folder that Sasha handed back to him is one he hadn’t gotten around to placing yet, but none of the pages inside are out of order. If Gertrude was right, then this should be fairly easy.

Clearing his throat, he presses the start button on his screen and begins to read.

_“I swear I didn’t do it. Seriously, I don’t even know how to drive. I would never have taken my dad’s car like that just because he was out of town, I mean, where would I have even been trying to go? Not like Bradleigh invited me to her stupid party anyway. Clearly, if I was trying to go there, I had to have been possessed. I was totally possessed! Don’t believe me, just ask my parents. Do you think Mr. McNeil would still press charges over his fence if I was possessed, I mean, how can I be held liable if I wasn’t in control of my own body? If I can get, like, some kind of letter from you guys just agreeing that’s what it was, that’d be aces.”_

Sasha stares at him as he stops the recording, only blinking when he closes the folder. “Well, that was obviously fake.”

“Ah,” Jon wags a finger at her. “So you would assume. So _I_ would assume, typically, but here’s how we can be sure.”

His own voice comes through clearly through the speaker when he presses play, consistent and with only the appropriate amount of static one can expect from a phone as old as his. He turns it off after the mention of Bradleigh’s party, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

“As expected: false.”

“Shocker there.”

“I’m not finished yet.” Jon swaps folders, holding it up to show her the first page inside it.

“This one is recent, just from this past November. I remember this one coming into research and kicking up gossip. At the time, I thought it was just… another regurgitation of another urban legend. I’m not sure now.”

Sasha gestures at him to get on with it. Jon clears his throat and starts a new recording.

_“Anyone who’s written about music long enough has at least heard of Grifter’s Bone. An urban legend, I guess you could call it. Not quite a ghost story, not quite a joke, not quite a real thing.”_

He doesn’t read far before he stops. The audio is just as distorted as it had been the first time he tried this out. Testing it live to show Sasha the difference was worth reading that first paragraph again, despite the pit it puts in his stomach and the way the result makes his ears ring.

Sasha’s eyes are wide under her sunken brow, a hand risen up to plug one of her ears. Jon hits record one more time and lifts the mic to his mouth.

“See what I mean?”

Holding his phone out between them, he plays the short file over again and watches Sasha’s face register the clarity in the echo.

“That’s what happens every time?”

Jon nods. “With the ones that Gertrude dog-eared, yes.”

Every time she looks down at the papers scattered around them, Sasha looks like she’s just lost her place reciting the decimals of pi. Jon understands; it’s hard to keep track of where he’s started and ended in this process. He has too many uncertainties to feel secure in the dents he makes, doubtful of whether they mean anything.

“Have you been doing test recordings of all of these other ones, too?”

Jon shakes his head. “I only received something concrete about this a few days ago, after Gerry took a live statement using an analog tape recorder. For whatever reason, those can pick up what more digital machines… aren’t equipped to interact with.”

“Where’s the tape of that one?”

“Right here.” Jon reaches over to grab the recorder from where he’d stacked the rest of the verified statements, somewhat under the table. “But it’s only partial. For some reason he took half of it in writing, it’s— it’s a disaster.”

Sasha’s eyes narrow as she takes the recorder and the file from him, flicking through the written portion. Something twists upward in Jon’s chest when she pulls her own mobile phone out of her cardigan pocket.

“I’m not really interested in doing a slack job on this, either.” She opens up her voice memo app and reaches for a new folder entirely. “We should be double checking these, you’re right. Even if we don’t know what causes it yet, it’s still a method of division. If you stop thinking about it as finding the _real_ ones and switch to trying to find the ones that _don’t record digitally,_ you might get less caught up in wanting to spend the amount of time on these you would if you’d been assigned just one or two a week.”

Jon rocks where he’s sitting, pulling his better leg up to tuck his foot underneath his opposite thigh. He pushes down on his knee with his elbow, leaning forward more comfortably after a pop from his hip.

“That sounds like a plan,” he agrees. “I’ve been sorting these loosely by topic even after seeing that Gertrude had shunted them aside. We have no idea if any of them were filed wrong, or if any could indirectly help us later.”

“Okay, so let’s start here.” Sasha waves the folder in her hand. “One at a time. We’ll take turns reading aloud, like an assembly line. And after I get the full shakedown about what’s really going on here, I’ll help you really go over the ones Gertrude seemed to believe in.” 

Jon feels the corners of his mouth pulling back in relief and gratitude. He gathers up a selection of folders to put them back in one pile, content to start over now that he’s not doing it out of some aimless compulsion.

“I have a feeling that the two of us are going to be doing most of the work around here.”

Sasha grins. “Ready when you are.”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"wingstart" - winging it, improvising; a lot of jon's mannerisms are very birdlike / beginning; a flinch_  
>    
> surprise! anyone you thought wasn’t going to be relevant, they’re relevant. martin and georgie have parts to play! also, never forget that GTCU jon worked at the natural history museum. that lore plays a big part in [two ships passing]()!  
> [ [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) | [tumblr](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/) | [GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#) ]
> 
> ON DECK: **KEYHOLDER**  
>  i.e., catching up with gerry and tim on the road; take a guess who they're going to meet next!


	5. KEYHOLDER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you really think that’s going to work?”
> 
> “You’re the one who thinks we need some elaborate sales pitch.”
> 
> Tim presses his hand to the wall over Gerry’s shoulder and props the other on his hip, rolling his head in Melanie’s direction with a sigh. “Yeah, well, if it were up to _you,_ we might be facing a lawsuit before we get those tapes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack:** [possibility - autoheart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRR0yqG5JZs)
> 
> **CWs in the end notes!**

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


“Isn’t most of their show just them spending the night in spooky places and putting red circles over _orb footage,_ or whatever?”

“Can’t really get away with that here.” Gerry nods at the hostile architecture lining the curved wall of the Underground with a curled lip as they pass.

Tim makes a similar face at them. “Still, I don’t really know how they expect to get much out of busy people with places to be. This seems like it’d be the worst place to forage for interviews.”

“Guess that’s why they’re hanging by the shitty benches. Waiting for people stuck waiting.”

“Familiar with the tactic?” Tim asks. “Ever lie in wait for the precise fated moment to bestow your _doomy portents?”_

Gerry doesn’t dignify that with an answer. There is a natural sway to his gait that he fights off when he’s around other people. Were he not focused on that, they might have knocked shoulders by now.

Tim keeps his pace without complaint. Not every day someone just _doesn’t ask_ why you move so slow. Gerry won’t complain, either. They stop to hover by a wall, waiting for Melanie King’s camerawoman to lower her rig. This place doesn’t seem too haunted right off the bat, but Gerry can’t say he’s never heard the fabled tapping on other occasions himself. He just can’t say he’s ever hoped to run into anything in the _veil_ while he’s trying to get some shuteye on the tube.

“Let’s go over it again,” Tim says. “We just walk over and say, _‘hey, we’re just some completely normal guys doing some super normal research on spirit photography and collecting some data, Georgie Barker said you might have some experience with corrupted footage.’_ Do you really think that’s going to work?”

Gerry shrugs, crossing his arms, too. “You’re the one who thinks we need some elaborate sales pitch.”

Tim presses his hand to the wall over Gerry’s shoulder and props the other on his hip, rolling his head in Melanie’s direction with a sigh. “Yeah, well, if it were up to _you,_ we might be facing a lawsuit before we get those tapes.”

Gerry glances up from his arm to frown at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tim meets his eyes, unimpressed. “I’m assuming that while you were doing all that freelance work, you never talked to anyone long enough to be told how ominous you come off.”

Ass. “Nobody gets sued just for being ominous.”

_“Yet.”_ Tim points a finger at him. “Remember what I said about your doomy portents?”

“Trying to forget, actually.”

Unaffected. _“Trust_ me, you don’t want it caught on camera.”

“It won’t be.” Gerry turns to look at the crew; the passerby they seemed to be interviewing has walked away, leaving them to huddle together in apparent idle. “Go time. After you.”

“Roger.”

Tim pushes away from the wall and dusts his hands on his trousers before he hooks his thumbs on his belt loops, casual in his approach. Gerry’s hands bury in his jacket pockets. He hasn’t found a good replacement yet for the longer one.

The first person to see them is a man with square-framed glasses and the center of his lower lip pierced with a black hoop. He taps Melanie on the shoulder and points behind her, whispers something that Gerry can’t hear from still so far away. She whips around with a showman’s smile for just a second before she’s turning back to whisper, too, waving for the rest of the crew to follow her. Must be hoping they’ve seen the ghost walking in and out of the train carts here, or whatever other creepy thing Georgie said they’d be here trying to capture. She isn’t looking at them like she was told to expect Institute losers crashing her shoot.

Well, at least this is half the work done for them. Technically.

“Hi there!” she greets as they close in, speaking into a handheld microphone. “We’re Ghost Hunt UK, do you have a minu—”

The question is cut off with a strangled, inward squeaking sound that seems to lodge itself in her throat like shrapnel. Her eyes go huge with what Gerry can identify as pure horror, both of her hands flying up to cover her mouth before she seems to realize she’s still holding the mic. 

Gerry stares back at her, unable to mask his own startled confusion. The guy who first spotted them is doubled over, obviously stifling laughter. The guy with the boom mic looks just as baffled as the camerawoman. They both lower their devices when Melanie starts waving a hand behind her back.

“Um.” Tim’s voice breaks the terrible silence. He gestures between Gerry and Melanie. “Why do I feel like the only person who has no idea what’s going on?”

“You’re not,” Gerry says without looking at him, brow twisted.

“Oh, my G-d.” Melanie openly cringes for a moment before she tries to shake herself out of… whatever the hell that was, letting out a quick deep breath. “Sorry! Hi, wow, okay. Um. Can I… help you gentlemen…?”

“No, no, no.” Tim shakes his head. “Sorry, I can’t pretend that didn’t just happen. Also, weren’t you about to ask _us_ something?”

“Um!” She whips around again to survey the station, fluffy, black curls flying, and turns back around with a flustered smile. “You know, we still have some filming left to do, actually! We wanted at least one more interview, so if you haven’t seen a ghost— in this part of the Underground, specifically! Then we’ll have to talk la—” 

The laughing guy straightens up to wipe his eyes under his glasses. “Uh, no. We’ve been at this for hours, just like we were yesterday. We’re not gonna get another one out of this crowd, and _I_ need to know what’s going on here, too.”

Gerry weakly raises a hand. “Me, too.”

_“Andy,”_ Melanie hisses at the guy, her eyes flickering back to Gerry now with something a lot clearer in her eyes: complete mortification. That’s a new one.

Tim’s arms are crossed expectantly, his elbow almost overlapping Gerry’s arm as it hangs loose at his side. He stepped closer at some point, angled in front of him. That’s a new one, too.

“Fine!” Melanie throws her hands up a little in defeat, microphone waving. “Fine, but we’re _not_ talking about it here.” And then she turns to Gerry, blurting out the weirdest question anyone has ever asked him in such a desperately apologetic tone: “Can I buy you a coffee? Literally anything?”

He blinks at her. “Uh—?”

“Sure,” Tim fills in, clapping a hand on Gerry’s back. “Where to?” 

They agree to just wander until they find the nearest cafe with room for six at a table. Tim pulls Gerry back a few paces while they wait for the crew to pack up their equipment, and leans in with a sharp whisper.

“Okay, what the hell did _you_ do to _Moderately Known YouTube Personality, Melanie King?”_

_“Nothing,_ I don’t think?” Gerry turns his back to the passing crowd, gripping at one of his sleeves. “This has never happened to me before. They all definitely know who I am.”

“You’ve never been recognized out in public?”

“Not by anybody who’d want to buy me a coffee.”

Tim lets out a gushing sigh, glancing over his shoulder. “Call me mad, but I think changing your name on the doorplate _might_ have been completely useless.”

He doesn’t laugh much when Gerry shoves his arm, the both of them facing Melanie and her crew again as she gestures them to the exit. Andy’s gotten a hold of his _schadenfreude,_ it seems, and has put himself in charge of small talk on the way across the street. The camerawoman — Toni, as Andy introduces her — still looks apprehensive, and Pete the sound tech keeps staring at his tattoos.

Logically, Gerry can guess at the root. Both the paranormal and true crime sides of YouTube got a long run out of the Mary Keay scandal. The dread in his stomach writhes around like a living thing. It’s confusing; if he’s a matricidal demon to them, why try and engage? Not being able to make a guess is torment.

Tim and Andy handle placing the orders at the cafe with muttered cues from their respective charges, appearing to compete over who gives the cashier the most polite and charming smile before they walk away. Only Toni seems to have gained her voice back enough to tease them over it.

Melanie looks fantastically uncomfortable at the table between Toni and Pete, frowning down at her bright turquoise nails as she clicks them together. Gerry should probably stop staring at her. That’s usually what does it.

“Alright, time’s up,” Andy says. “Cards on the table, King.”

“Okay, _okay,”_ she snaps, rubbing her temples. She drops her hands to her lap with a harsh sigh, looking across the table at Gerry with a weary face. “…You really _don’t_ remember me?”

Gerry narrows his eyes at her, digging in his head for a memory until he finds it. It’s not the look of her that he remembers; if it was, he would have pieced it together just from watching her videos. It’s the high curl of her voice right in this moment that does it; the pitch it takes on when she’s humiliated, agonizing under the vulnerability of being perceived.

_“Oh.”_ Gerry bites his lips together to trap a soft, wheezing laugh. “Okay, _now_ I remember.”

Melanie groans, face in her hands again. Everyone else cranes to watch him, anticipating. It’s Tim who breaks first, sliding back into his seat with a hot drink in each hand and sliding Gerry’s towards him.

“Okay, _what?_ What did I miss?”

“He remembers her,” Pete contributes. “General atmosphere points to ‘it was bad.’”

Tim makes a cautious face. “Okay, are we talking drunken hookup bad, or—?”

Melanie snaps her head up to make a disgusted noise at Tim at the precise moment that Gerry does. They exchange a quick glance across the table. Nigh imperceptible nods are exchanged. It’s a whole moment.

“…Asked and answered.” Tim’s brow is sky high. “Well? This really better be good.”

Gerry pops the lid off of his cup to blow on the hot chocolate inside. He manages a thin sip before he answers mildly, “Caught her trying to break into my flat last year.”

The collective sound from around the table is sort of impressive. Melanie groans again, this time followed by what Gerry thinks is fake crying muffled into her hands. Andy’s hair has a purple highlight to it under the lighting here when he drops his head to the table to laugh, swiveling off the side of his bench to bow over his lap before turning back around to shake her arm.

Melanie shoves him off. “Shut up, okay! It was the worst thing that has _ever_ happened to me.”

Tim looks to Gerry, torn between incredulity and euphoria. “What did you _do?”_

Gerry glares at him, mouth still hovering over the rim of his drink. “I… asked her to leave?”

“Okay, but in a _person_ way or in a _harbinger_ way?”

Now he frowns. “I had groceries.”

“It was the most politely I’ve ever been dismissed from private property.” Melanie’s eyes turn to Gerry, absolutely tortured as she reaches an arm across the table to pat the space in front of him. “You are _so_ nice.”

Gerry takes another sip before he puts the cup back down. “So are you.”

“Wait, wait,” Toni gasps, coming down from her own snickering. “Is _this_ why you called off the story?”

The dread in his stomach grows claws. Rotten thing for a rock to do. It’s good he put the cup down, or he might have gripped it too tightly. Last thing he needs is to burn his hand again.

Melanie must see it on his face, if the panic on hers is any indication. The others must see it, too. Every time he thinks he’d like to feel seen, he turns out just feeling deeply exposed.

Tim steps in with a subject change. “How did you not recognize her?”

Thank you, Tim. This is perfect. Gerry picks up his cup again to take another sip, dousing the dread with something hot so that he can respond casually, calm.

“She was in disguise.”

Uproar. A chorus of, _“What?”_

Gerry meets eyes with Melanie again and lets his curve with a smile. She lifts a hand in utter defeat, flicking her wrist as if to say _go ahead. Pull the trigger._

Nice of her to recognize that she owes him, in a weird way. Gerry thinks he deserves this a little bit.

“One of those, like… Hepburn style head scarves.” He gestures around his head to trace the image, and then draws a circle around one of his eyes. “And really big—”

_“Big sunglasses!”_

G-d damn. All three of them at once. Gerry does not envy Melanie King right now.

She does seem to finally be trying to play along, though. The way she holds her head in her hands seems more theatrical now than genuinely despairing.

“He just came up behind me and said ‘I need to get in there,’ I about jumped out of my _skin.”_ Her shoulders bounce with restrained laughter. “I am _so_ sorry. I only swung by because we _seriously_ thought the place was abandoned. I never would have bothered you if I knew you were still living there.”

“It’s fine,” Gerry says. And oddly, he thinks it sort of is.

It’s uncomfortable to wrap his mind around it, but the level of genuine ease around the table and Melanie’s painful sincerity is enough to make it very clear that they think he’s innocent. This whole time, maybe, none of them ever believed he did it. Complete strangers.

For a moment, that’s the only thing he can say. He thumbs the edge of the cardboard sleeve around his cup, has a quiet staring contest with his wrist. He’d feel bad for making it more awkward if he hadn’t been snuck up on while trying to get something done.

It’s Pete who seems to remember that first.

“Okay, wait a second. I know why _we_ were at the station, but what were _you_ two doing? You were coming right up to us for something.”

“Shit, yeah,” Tim says. “I’d say we got more than a little sidetracked there.”

He starts to explain using the cover he’d rehearsed, only getting so far as Georgie Barker’s name before a sudden light turns on in Gerry’s brain. He lifts his head to look at Melanie, reaching out a hand to pat Tim’s arm before he can say anything about digital distortion.

“You were looking for ghosts at the bookshop,” he interrupts. “What if I told you I did have a story for you?”

Everyone stops to look at him. His focus stays trained on Melanie as she registers the offer, her eyes cycling from complete bewilderment to a hungry sort of joy that she might still be a little ashamed of, if only for the timing.

“I— I mean, that would be fantastic, yeah, if you’re comfortable?”

“We’ve got a few minutes.” Gerry shrugs. “I could answer a few questions outside. Not too cold out right now.”

“It’s freezing,” Tim counters. Ah, right. Temperature regulation is a thing most people just have.

Melanie shakes her head, blinking widely. “My jacket’s warm enough, I’m fine to step out.”

Perfect. Gerry turns to Tim, his face kept neutral. “Tim, you should stay in here where it’s warm.” He gives the others a faint wince. “You guys should, too. I don’t really want it to be this… big production, you know.”

“‘Course, man,” Andy assures. “We have a tripod in the bag, that should be fine, right?”

Tim has to scoot out of the booth to let Gerry out. He glances past Gerry’s head at the others as they bustle for their equipment again, frowning down at him with worry and a whisper.

“What are you doing?”

“Just hang out with them a bit,” Gerry whispers back. “They’re cool. This won’t take long.”

There’s a weird urge there to pat his arm again as he sidles past him to drift into the walkway. Gerry tamps it down, hands in his pockets again until he and Melanie find a clear place with a wall that he can lean against. He stands still while she clips a little microphone to his lapel, but when she starts unfolding the tripod, he stops her.

“Don’t worry about that. More effort than it’s worth.”

“Oh, um.” She putters for a moment, confused. “I mean, usually I ask questions and… appear… on camera? So, I’d need to—”

“I know what it’s for,” he laughs, almost. “I’m saying it’s not necessary.”

“But—” Melanie cuts herself off with a sigh. After a second, she turns on the camera. “Alright, if that’s how you want to do this.”

Gerry nods. There’s a shiver spasming somewhere deep in his gut, nowhere else. So, he’s either surpassed being cold, or his body is more upset with how this day has been going than his brain is letting him register. Either or, some part of him is numb. 

Which means, at least, that he doesn’t feel all that bad about what he’s about to do. He does hope she’s using a fresh memory card, though.

“Okay, we’re rolling. Want to just try out some warmup questions before we get started proper?”

“For the best.”

“I’ll introduce you at the start of the real take.” Melanie meanders side to side until she finds an angle she likes, and clears her throat. “So, your friend in there said you’re doing some research on spirit photography. How long have you been interested in the paranormal?”

Already, he fights the urge to roll his eyes. “We’re collecting some data for a few friends. Mostly kicks.”

“Right.” She shudders in a breeze. “But you seem invested enough. Would you say you’ve had experience with this sort of thing before?”

“You could say, yeah.”

“How so?”

She’s doing such a good job avoiding asking the obvious questions. _Are any of the rumors true? Why did you stay living in that flat where she died? Didn’t it haunt you to be there? Did she haunt you? Does she still?_

“Gerard?”

“You can turn the camera off now.” Gerry shifts his posture, pressing his other shoulder blade against the wall. “I think that’s enough.”

Melanie doesn’t mask disappointment well. She does, however, cover it quickly with concern. “Did I say something wrong?”

Gerry shakes his head. “No. I just figure it’s time to show you what I actually came to talk to you about.”

She lowers her camera, rubbing her palm over the fingers hooked around the hand strap. “I mean, you just wanted to talk ghost photos, right? That’s pretty much what our entire channel is, so, if you want to go over a particular episode to compare notes or something, then—”

He shakes his head again. “Play the tape back.”

“…What?”

Gerry points an elbow at the camera, hands still in his pockets. “Go on. Just play it back, and see for yourself.”

It doesn’t hit him until about four solid seconds of staring that she’s starting to wonder if _he’s_ the ghost. Oops.

She seems to decide after six seconds that there’s only one way to find out. Backing one step away from him, she pushes the playback button, sparing him one last little glare before her focus is snatched up by what he knows is a crackling mess of static and snow. Unless she studies the tape frame by frame, she might not see _it,_ but the surface seems to be enough.

“That’s the sort of footage we’re after,” he says. “Have you ever caught anything like that before?”

Melanie backs away another step, a new emotion in her eyes.

“What is this?” she demands, holding up the camera. “Is this some kind of _payback,_ or— or, or a prank?”

Gerry blinks at her. “No, it’s not—”

“Is _Andy_ in on this with you, did he give me a bad memory chip? I cannot _believe—”_

“—it really isn’t—”

“I said I was sorry! I said you were _nice!_ And then you _ate_ my _camera_ with _ghost magic!”_

Gerry’s hands brace on his knees as he bends forward to laugh, head reeling with the shift in gravity. He tips against the wall behind him, waving his hands at her in a feeble _no, you’ve got it all wrong._

“I’m not a ghost,” he wheezes. “I was messing with you a little, but that’s not— that’s not the punchline, I’m sorry.”

“What the hell _was_ the punchline! Destruction of property?”

He drums on his chest, catching his breath. “It’s not broken for good. Honest.”

_“Really?”_ Spat like a challenge. She crosses her arms and bounces a little where she stands against the February chill, eyes narrowed. “What are you playing at?”

“Do you have any clips or bits of audio that just seem like they’re screaming? Even when you remember the place being dead quiet? Stuff that might not have even lined up with what you were looking for.”

A flicker in her scowl. Melanie’s eyes dart off to the side, sorting through memories. When they shift back to him, he can see that she’s found one, even if she doesn’t say as much. He kind of misses the way she was looking at him before.

He doesn’t say as much.

“I need to see them.”

  
  
  


By the time they get back inside, the others have finished their drinks. Gerry buys another hot chocolate before they go their separate ways, and slips Andy enough money to pay back whatever he’d spent at the counter before. When he tries to argue, Gerry just nods at Melanie, still pouting over her camera, and says he thinks he owes them for the trouble.

“Unbelievable,” Tim announces when they’ve walked far enough away. His voice is still a bit too loud even after the last stretch of loud traffic settled into relative quiet. “That was like being in a barrel going over Niagara Falls.”

“It’s not like I planned to do that,” Gerry tells him. “I didn’t get in the barrel on purpose.”

“Oh, no, I know you didn’t! Because we had a different plan!” Tim gestures with both arms, narrowly avoiding Gerry’s. “And then we were _all_ just stuffed into the same barrel by the sentient hands of freakish coincidence and plummeted to our untimely deaths as a unit. I was very much also in the barrel.”

Gerry laughs. For a moment, the sway to his gait brings their shoulders together before he sways back the other way. Tim blows air into his hands to warm them, head tipped up to watch the sky.

“We didn’t even have to do all that. We don’t need these tapes _that_ badly.”

“Sure we do. Jon and Sasha want them, we need something to occupy our time while we’re between leads for the Circus.” Gerry sips his hot chocolate. “It’s weird encounters like these that keep me from going completely off the deep end.”

“I’d have thought the opposite, frankly.” Tim turns to look at him. “She _did_ sneak around in front of your flat with a camera.”

Gerry fishes his lighter out of his pocket. “Didn’t bother me at the time.”

Tim stares at him, even as he reaches out to take his hot chocolate from him. “Okay. No offense, but _how?”_

“She wasn’t harassing me, or accusing me of anything. Just misinformed.” Gerry doesn’t look at Tim as he lights up a cigarette, dropping his lighter back in his pocket so he can take his cup back. “I’ve never sat and talked to someone who really didn’t think it was me.”

There is a stretch of quiet. Tim reaches up to readjust one of his hearing aids, sniffing against the cold.

“Alright, but that fake interview thing? You scared the _crap_ out of me. I thought you were going to tell her about the whole Lovecraftian nightmare that is our job. Or, like, _all_ of your trauma.”

“Honesty policy doesn’t go _that_ far.” Gerry turns his head to let out smoke on the other side of him, away from Tim. “Even I have limits.”

“Which apparently don’t include breaking some poor woman’s camera with your magic powers.” Tim laughs, reaching up with both hands to undo his elastic and gather his hair into a neater bun. “Showoff.”

Okay. Maybe he was grandstanding a little bit. He’s already established that no one can sue him for it.

“You can’t prove anything,” Gerry says. “There’s no evidence.”

When they reach the station again, Gerry’s phone buzzes in his pocket. New message from an unsaved number that he can identify on sight.

**Melanie:** YOU’RE **MAGNUS GOONS**????????

“Whoops,” he laughs, angling his phone towards Tim. “Guess Barker let the cat out of the bag.”

Tim keeps huffing to himself every few minutes on the train home, like he’s trying to forget about it, but still wants to laugh. Gerry still kind of wants to laugh, too.

  
  


───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


No use in turning the light on. He could read just fine by the moonbeam from the window, slicing through his dark sleeve like a bolt of lightning when he unbends his arm across the table. He thinks better of it. He needs a hand to rest his head in.

“What made you resort to this?”

“Ran out of leads,” Gerry mumbles. “Didn’t know what else to do.”

Gertrude makes a noncommittal sound. This is when he would hear the rustle of her sleeves as she crossed her arms, if she still existed.

“It’s far too early to run yourself to the edge of the world.”

He knows that already. Why else would he have read her here? It’s barely March. It’s too soon to feel failure, too, but to hit a wall after only a month of active searching feels like a new low. Something feels wrong with his compass. 

“Where did you go last?”

“Grant Museum of Zoology.”

“Nothing there?”

Gerry shrugs. Mutters, “Just a jar of moles.”

Tim had gone a little manic over it. _Why_ stuff eighteen moles into a jar? Who would do that? The fact that no one knows where it came from had made him very certain that at least one of the moles inside was of nefarious origin. In the end, they were just moles, and not even the kind of moles they were looking for.

“Don’t be surprised if you have to branch off from the line of logic you’re following. It’s not just mammal skins that the Stranger works with.”

“I know.”

He half-expects her to do that sullen sigh that mothers do when their children haven’t been very social in the past few weeks, and they willfully misinterpret struggle as spite. He knows it’s irrational. He knows that’s never been who Gertrude was. 

But he’s been wrong about her before. He had to read her here.

She’s calm, so he’ll be calm.

“You think I’m stupid for doing this.”

Or maybe he’ll just be smaller. His words are melting ice cubes, painful in his mouth.

He knows how Gertrude’s lips are pinched without looking at her. He knows already that she’s in the other chair in this moondark room beside him, and so he doesn’t have to look at her. He doesn’t want to look at her.

“Well, I would never have used it directly myself, but you’ve already decided to do it anyway.”

Gerry curls his hand against his temple. He feels numb and empty and he knows that something in him is trembling but Gertrude is calm and so he will be calm. As long as he doesn’t look at her. He just won’t look at her.

“Adelard said it works.”

“It does work. The risks were always just too great for me to reconcile with.”

Gerry looks at the phone on the table. He wants to check the time. Why had he summoned her again? He already knew what she would think. Did he just _want_ to be told it was stupid? Is this the learned behaviour she died gambling on? He thought he’d been doubting his direction before, but now— but now—

“If he’s the one who recommended it to you, I’m hard pressed to think up a way to talk you out of it. You’ve already made it quite clear that you have no intention of following in my footsteps.” She would shrug here, eyes shut and unaffected. Bitter, but feigning not. “Perhaps you’ll be… better suited to his way.”

“He trusts people,” Gerry guesses. “But you never did.”

“I trust him more than you could ever ask me to trust someone from that network.”

Scope is a work of genius. That much, Gerry can see. He’s been terrified to try and use it, until now. But he’s already staked a claim. He’s set to take care of it tonight, and now what terrifies him is his own excitement.

Among the contact information that Adelard had left on top of the Catalogue when he left this place in Gerry’s hands, there was a letter on a fresh sheet of paper.

  
  


Gerard, 

I hope that all of this is enough for you to reach me should you need. If the resentment you may have for me should ever fade, I can only hope it will be just enough that I hear back from you someday, if just to give me a piece of your mind. I know the keys to this place are nowhere near enough to make up for its burdens, but understand that opening that book is your choice. I’ve done my part for my dear friend, but you owe her nothing more than you have already given. 

In the meantime, allow me to offer you a resource. I’ll include instructions for how to use it, and some advice, in case you’d prefer to work independently of us both. If you still plan on impeding the Unknowing, there may be others who can help you. 

Have you ever heard of Scope? I doubt Gertrude will have ever mentioned it, though I’m more than happy to expose her vicarious use of it through me. She’ll go on about its dangers, but she of all people should understand that some information is worth a calculated risk. 

Scope is a private mobile application that I use on occasion for networking. I was first told of it by a professor in Wales who lost a daughter to the Dark, and who thought I could make smart use of it. It hasn’t failed me yet, but that is largely in part due to extreme caution. If you do decide to use it, try to limit your use of it to within the safehouse. 

The closest thing I can think to liken it to is CB radio, and all the two really have in common are relative anonymity and slews of coded shorthand. You pick up on it fast, but I’ll write the most frequently used terms down below, for reference. Better I get out the important things at once just in case you try to use this without calling me first, which I will say I’d prefer that you do. 

Most of the people who frequent Scope aren’t openly aligned avatars themselves, as evidenced by my use of it. In fact, most of the userbase is comprised of civilian informants who don’t speak unless they see something unusual at their day job. Coroners, doctors, disease control. Bartenders, bin men, priests. Some just offer shelter. 

As you may have guessed, you’ll find no shortage of Hunters there. It’s a bit like walking into a cave and knowing that the ceiling is covered in bats. Best to keep your torch low, but you shouldn’t wander in the dark. Anything could wake them, and you’ll need the light to get out. 

It’s run by three moderators, each with a fairly obvious connection to The Hunt (V), The Web (T), and The Eye (S). A daunting combination, yes, but it’s rare that any of them speak. The caveat is that they are, of course, always watching. The Hunter is the only one who has shared his name past the initial he goes by. The V stands for Veremund, or so he says. He serves the purpose of, and I quote, “conflict resolution.” So far, I’ve only seen it enforced twice. 

Assuming this intrigues you, I’m going to provide you with a hyperlink and a six-digit entry key. I suggest a fresh mobile and a VPN before visiting the link.

You’ll need to input the key every time you open it. There’s an alert scheduled for every three weeks to reset it, and if you don’t check it within the twelve hours before it’s deleted, you will be locked out. Luckily for you, I can always pass you the new one if you miss it, but the general consequence is that you will lose all of your contacts and potential leads if you aren’t very aware of the countdown. 

The only identification you’re meant to offer is a rough radius of how far you’re willing to travel for a job, and what your ‘expertise’ is. A blank profile will draw immediate suspicion. You’ll have to put in your drop of blood, so to speak, just like everyone else. 

Smirke’s Fourteen are referred to by number. The order is more or less arbitrary, I’ll list that on the back. Scope can be set up to alert you any time a particular number is mentioned, or if there’s a ping within your radius, and you can choose whether or not to step in with information or an offer to take care of something. If you claim fast enough, the other member will message you directly with details. 

So when you create a profile, you’ll want to include the number 13 somewhere, along with whichever others you feel you can speak on, and a rough distance from at least four cities over from London. Again, the chances you’ll be bothered are slim. Again, Hunters. 

Here is some of the shorthand you’ll need to keep in mind. Most of it is fairly self explanatory, but the symbols can get a little tricky. Then, your eyes are undoubtedly far sharper than mine. 

  
\- Offers: of  
\- Information request: in  
\- Assistance: as  
\- Urgent: >  
\- Take your time: <  
\- Present, but not active: =  
\- If someone asks for someone in your area, and you’re unavailable: X  
\- You’re available/invitation to privately message: O  


So if someone were to send “13in<” that would translate to, “This isn’t life or death, but I need to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about The Eye.” If someone were to send “14/10as>” that would be most closely read as, “This thing needs to be taken care of, but I can’t do it myself. I think it has something to do with the Stranger or the Spiral.” To respond, you would just send an “O” and wait for a potential question or a location sent. Some people might send their entire inquiry into the main server and get a conversation out of it. I tend to just observe when that happens, but there have been times I stepped in with a “=” to ease someone’s worry about something I knew to be rather benign. 

Finally, there’s a function to send out a signal from your exact location, in the event that you’re in danger and don’t have the time for conversation. I’ve only ever seen it used once in all the time I’ve been on Scope, and the same user was back in the server the next week. It was oddly uplifting, actually; they sent out a thank you to the user who had come to their aid, and a good percentage of other members responded with a flood of asterisks in celebration. Inclined or otherwise, there was something incredibly human about it. 

I think that about covers the basics. The link is [ http://ecgnxu.qxegnra.no ](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/795528665352896522/795528701541351464/scope5.png) — from there, the key is **4YZ5ZT.** It’s scheduled to reset on the 5th of February.

I hope this is of some help to you, Gerard. This should be enough information to get you started. My Scope handle is PR5D. Take any cues you need from the structure of my bio, and send me a message any time. 

Adelard Dekker 

  
  


Gerry almost wishes he’d had this kind of thing growing up. He just doesn’t know if he could have trusted himself to be responsible with it. He’d been in a place once where he thought that if he were to ever end up aligning, it might be with the Hunt. Most days, he’s glad he didn’t. Right this second, he’s not so sure.

“What should I look out for?”

“Let me see,” Gertrude says, and he has no choice but to lean closer to her. He keeps his eyes on his phone, his hair fallen over his shoulder between them, and taps at the screen.

“Stay away from that one.” She points to user SJ6E. “Corruption, if I recall. The rot side.”

She doesn’t have many more warnings. Gerry doesn’t think most of them matter. He’d sent an impulsive O into the chat in response to a 14of> in Ipswich, and been told privately about an antique shop called Anecdotes. He’s already agreed to check it out. He didn’t need Gertrude’s approval or judgment. He doesn’t know what he thought he needed from her.

What she’s giving him is a look that he can feel crawling down his arms like fire ants. She must notice him glancing past the curtain of his hair before he looks away again, closing Scope to place his phone face down on the table.

“You know all of them feed off of this, don’t you? Every time you worry about missing a code change, that’s for The Eye. The Web will always know where you are.”

“It already knows where I am,” he mumbles. “What else is new?”

Gertrude doesn’t say anything to that. “I’m primarily concerned about the Hunters. They make up at least half of the avatars in there, it’s essentially theirs.”

“I don’t plan on messing with Hunters.”

“So you say until one makes you an offer.” She’s sitting back in her chair again when he moves his hair. She casts no shadow into the moonlight shining on the table.

“Hunters exist on something of a bell curve, in my experience. You can’t trust a fledgeling to control themselves any more than you can trust a warhorse. If they’ve been with the Hunt for too long, it means they’ve been hunted, as well.”

“And they keep winning.”

This is where she would nod. He nods, too, like he’s agreeing with her agreement to his agreement. Appearances. Rote.

“By the time this was created, I had established myself as far too much of a nuisance to get involved. If you’re going to be using it, keep your identity as obstructed as possible. You don’t want these people catching your scent.” The silence of rolling eyes. “They would just assume you were me.”

Gerry doesn’t need her to tell him how terribly that would go. For a moment he hears _Archivist, Archivist_ in Michael’s faceblind bile and he doesn’t know if it’s the music in his ear or just a memory, but he doesn’t want it. If he is to be anyone, it won’t be her. That’s the one thing he knows.

Now the sullen sigh. Not so _sullen,_ maybe, but resigned. Disappointed, maybe, in his simple thoughts and words. By the lack of them for the last however long.

“How have you been corresponding with Adelard?”

Shrug. “He called once. Ask how I was.”

“I’d suggest writing in the long term. That’s the best way to get a response from him. While he’s using things like this, especially, he tends to trust a letter more.”

“But his hand,” Gerry frowns. It feels sort of unfair even looking at the letter he’d already written and knowing by now that the way his fingers are melded together is hardly half a year old.

Gertrude is unmoved. “He made it out of Klanxbüll. He can relearn how to hold a pen.”

That doesn’t seem right. Never mind that he’s already managed to do it; the penmanship in every note he’s left has still been laboured and slanted. All Gerry knows how badly his own hands hurt on most days, and all he’s ever had were burns and bad bones. He misses painting without pain. He wants to paint about it. He twists a silver splint around his finger. Gertrude’s impression can still express impatience.

“At any rate, he’s still your most reliable contact to keep eyes on other corners of the world.”

“Because _you_ knew him personally?”

She ignores him. “He’s the best one to help you as you start to understand the politics of who might be useful to you. Avatars, and the like.”

He considers bitterness at the implication that he doesn’t _already_ understand and is interrupted by a honk from outside. His heart picks up speed in an instant. It’s silly of him. It’s joyous.

“Time’s up,” he says, sitting up straight. “That’s my cue.”

“If that’s all you needed from me.”

Gertrude’s arms are still crossed. She’s cross, really, looking at him like that. As if she can get away with pretending that she believes she’s at _his_ mercy. The sheer absurdity of it drags his mouth into a smile, even as he reaches across for the open book between them.

“It was, actually.” The cover drops shut with a muffled sound. “You’re dismissed.”

Gertrude fades with a sigh, her eyes shut. Like it was actually her who couldn’t stand to look at him the entire time. Like he’d done this to her, had looked at her and decided, _yes, I want you to hurt this way._ He knows she must be in pain. Is he supposed to feel remorse for that, too? Is he supposed to feel guilty for what she’d asked for with such conviction that Adelard Dekker couldn’t tell her _no?_

He doesn’t have room for it. Not when standing so fast pulls the blood from his head like it’s magnetic, when he doesn’t know whether to laugh at himself for forgetting the damage or crumple under pure relief. His phone buzzes in his hand and he feels like a teenager again, sneaking down the fire escape to meet a boy in the city. It’s different now, being older. Being free to just walk out the front door.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

“I mean, yeah, you futzed with the security cameras, which is great and all, but what if that person just sent you here for no reason, just to mess with you?”

“What, you mean like some kind of hazing ritual?”

“Well, you _are_ new to the scene and this _is_ the first weird, gibberish codeword you’ve responded to. You’re fresh meat to all of them, I bet.”

“What would that even accomplish? The guy is a garden designer, Tim. He just comes here for old vintage urns and wagon bits to stuff between foliage and felt something wrong about the place. I feel it, too. You’ve got to stop whispering.”

“We’ve been around _twice_ now, peeked in all the creepy wardrobes and grandfather clocks and turned all the ugly dolls backwards. It’s going to be just as much a bust as all the other ones. Honestly, I think breaking in might have been useless, we probably won’t even find anythi—”

  
  


───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


Tim lowers his bottle with a heavy breath, wincing at the sting. Gerry guesses anything will feel strong enough when you chug it like that.

“A _badger?”_

“At least we could _tell_ it was a badger.” Gerry’s brow furrows. “Sort of. It was mostly badger. I really think. Like, at least twelve percent.”

Tim points a finger, still grasping the neck of the bottle. “That thing was _way_ bigger than a badger. It jumped clean at my chest! What jumps that high?”

Gerry hides his smile behind the rim of his water bottle. “A Rodent of Unusual Size?”

_“Enough,”_ Tim groans, and twists to drop his forehead against the wall, his bun loose and flopping. “Look, you _know_ I like _The Princess Bride_ as much as anyone — maybe admittedly more — but I never wanted to reenact that scene in real life.” He turns back around with a look of haunted anguish. “How did that _happen?_ In an _antique shop?_ In _Ipswich?”_

Gerry feels almost bad for laughing. He hopes the fact that he dispatched the thing faster than Buttercup thought to pick up a branch sort of makes up for it.

“You have to admit, the timing _was_ cinematic.”

“I know, that’s why I’m so _mad,”_ Tim despairs. “You think I don’t know that, Gerry? If it were anyone else, I’d have been on the ground for laughing reasons, not _being mauled_ reasons.”

Tim has a right to sulk. It’s past two in the morning, and they’d only just gotten out of A&E. Damn off-license rules cut off liquor sales at Applegreen well before they’d even _gotten_ to Ipswich, so they drove to find a 24-hour Tesco Metro. Not too far off. Gerry wasn’t about to deny the man a small comfort after he just got tackled by a theoretically identifiable taxidermy monster and came out of it with stitches. Tim can’t lean his back flat against the wall, his uninjured shoulder bearing the brunt of his weight and really just making him look all the more sad and droopy.

Poor guy. It is, unfortunately, still hilarious in hindsight. Some part of Gerry knows that Tim is hamming it up a little. In the spirit of committing to the bit.

Tim recovers enough to hold out his drink in offering. “Dunno if you’re much of a Hooch person.” He studies the lemon on the label for a moment. “I’m usually more for tequila myself, but I just sort of skimmed and snatched one at random.”

Gerry is already shaking his head halfway through the offer, lifting his water bottle. “No, yeah, I’m fine. I know I tend to have, uh. Bad reactions to alcohol, so I just… Don’t.”

Tim withdraws the bottle seamlessly. There’s still a pause before he says, “No worries. I understand that.”

Gerry turns his head to look at his profile. He’s pretty sure that Tim can’t be leveling with him about a habit of _literally_ passing right out from the tiniest sip of alcohol, given the chugging and all. Maybe another habit, then?

Not his business. Facing the car park again, Gerry shrugs. “Plus, if you’re drinking, I’ll have to drive us back.”

Tim slumps against the wall and groans. It turns to a hiss as he flinches forward to get his right shoulder blade off the bricks, his empty hand bouncing off of it in frustration.

“I don’t _want_ to drive back tonight,” he sighs. “But I guess you probably do. I get the feeling you just _don’t_ sleep at home, though. What’s that about?”

Gerry sips his water, weighing his options. He chooses to stay quiet for a few beats even after he’s done drinking, his back sliding down the wall as his boots stutter forward on the pavement.

“I don’t know,” he says, and then thinks better of it. Or maybe not _better,_ but… he thinks a little harder before he tries again. Tim doesn’t speak while he takes another sip of water. 

“Things just feel a lot like they did when I used to do just about anything for a place to sleep that _wasn’t_ home.”

Tim’s tone doesn’t take on alarm, or assumption, or pity. “Why would a safehouse be no different? I’d think a place you call that should be… I dunno, safe.”

Gerry shrugs again. He tucks his hair behind his ear, but his eyes stay on his boots. Wonders idly if Tim understands lace code enough to know he’s been flagging with the purple laces on his left side. If not, he might just look like an idiot with bright yellow still on the right.

“Do you want to go sit down?”

Tim has propped himself away from the wall with a hand on the bricks, peering at him past a strand fallen from his bun. When he sees he has Gerry’s attention, he nods towards his car.

“You look like you should get off your feet.”

Gerry pushes himself upright to the wall, pulling in a deep breath to stretch his lungs. “If you don’t mind me keeping a window open. Sort of want the fresh air.”

Tim starts meandering backwards off the curb. “Nobody’s on either side of us. I was gonna say we could pop a squat on the hood for a while, if you’re not too cold.”

“I don’t really get cold,” Gerry confirms, and shoves away from the wall to toss his water bottle in the bin. Tim lingers until he catches up.

It holds true enough when he climbs up onto the metal and finds it more pleasant than alarming. He presses both palms down for balance, leaves them there for the chill. It’s already better than the thick of the winter, even if they’ve got a ways to go until spring really kicks in.

Tim settles beside him, one heel braced on the bumper. He leans his arm on the bent knee between them, swirling his bottle in a half-limp hand. Gerry watches what’s left of the lemonade slosh in the relative darkness, and wonders what might happen if he reached over to take it from him. Set it aside somewhere, so their hands are free. He looks up at the sky instead. Fair amount of stars.

“I’m sorry the thing jumped out at you like that,” Gerry says. “I should have checked this out by myself.”

“That sort of defeats the purpose of keeping me around, doesn’t it?”

Gerry pulls a face. “Don’t say it like that. I don’t ‘keep you around’ for anything.”

Tim tuts at him. “Not even for my winning sense of humour?”

If it were funny, he would laugh. Tim’s posture changes.

“Wait, do you really think that was your fault?”

When Gerry still doesn’t answer, Tim shifts to face him.

“We both went in there, fair and square, knowing the risks. It was fifty-fifty on whether you got badger-whacked instead. I’m actually glad it was me.”

Gerry’s brow sinks. “That’s not some kind of macho thing, is it?”

Tim’s expression does the same thing. “I just think you’ve been dealing with a lot, pretty much nonstop. I’m sure getting thrown to the floor by that abomination would have been the last thing you needed. And… actually, yeah, if it took _me_ down that fast, I can’t imagine what it’d have done to you. Not to be rude, Gerry, but I’ve picked up on the fact that your body isn’t very nice to you.”

Squinting at him doesn’t last. Gerry brings his hands over his lap to pull off his splints and crack his knuckles one by one.

“Yeah, I’m not about to pull that whole… _oh, no, not me, I’m a strong, seasoned warrior, don’t tell me what I can’t handle, blaaah.”_ He rolls his eyes. “Not just because I know you wouldn’t buy it. It’s just not even true.”

He can feel Tim’s eyes on the joint of his jaw. “It’s not that I think you can’t handle yourself. I mean, obviously you’ve come this far. Clearly, you’ve been doing something right.”

“Minding my own business,” Gerry scoffs. “Any experience I have was never because I chose to… gear up and charge into battle. I never even thought that’s how this world could work until I met— Gertrude. Until Adelard, that stupid app, I’ve never… I never even considered there’d be people like-minded enough to make an honest go at going after things, helping each other. I worked solo because I _wanted_ to work solo, and the only things I ever went after were books.”

“So, why would you take that tip?” Tim asks. “Why have we been running around actively _looking_ for… _creatures_ like this if it wasn’t what you were already doing?”

Gerry opens his mouth to justify it, and stops. Tim seems to put it together at the same rate he is, only he manages to voice it first.

“…Have we just been doing this for me?”

“I— I guess so, yeah.” Gerry blinks at the asphalt stretched out ahead of them.

_“Why,_ though?” Tim asks. “I mean, why would you think this is what I want to spend my time doing? Did you just _assign me_ a macho thing?”

“It’s not _that,_ it’s—” A sharp sigh. He slips his ring splints back off and on again, alternating fingers. “I know what it’s like to feel directionless. To… need some kind of plan running in the background, to make it feel like you’re actually accomplishing something. I couldn’t… think of a better way to give that to you than this, I’m sorry.”

Gerry turns his head back to the storefront and shuts his eyes to its bright windows. He bends a leg up to fold his arms around it, careful not to scrape his rubber sole along the hood. Stupid.

The hood creaks with Tim’s weight as he leans over, not into Gerry’s space but still staring into it. Gerry can feel it when he faces forward again.

“Thank you,” are the words that make Gerry look back over to him. “I think… I always expected this to take time, even before I knew what I was supposed to be going after. It’s just different to think about it in the abstract than to put it into perspective with what we’ve been doing and _really see_ just how long this is all going to take.”

He’s right. Gerry had managed to pick up enough leads with Gertrude to at least know that the Dance isn’t happening any time soon. He’d made that clear to Tim from the start. It just felt wrong to give him nothing in the meantime.

“I’ll admit I’ve got a problem with instant gratification. Mostly when I’m… in a low period, or whatever it is I’m in now.” Tim’s eyes roll under closed lids. “That’s for me to work on. I’ve been on the track towards burning out for a while. If we keep up this kind of pace, trying to rush something that’s apparently got _years_ left in the workshop, I don’t know how either of us are going to get anything done.”

Gerry rests his cheek against his knee. “I’m sorry about that, too. You’re right, I don’t… I’m not used to this. I got by this long by taking things day by day. A lot of those days, I didn’t even get out of bed.” He sniffs, scoffs into his sleeve. “I’ve never had long term goals in my life.”

“Do you wish you did?” Tim’s hair is really loose now, the bun shifting as he tips his head. “If you could, what might they have been?”

Gerry thinks for a moment. He doesn’t need much more than that.

“I’m an artist,” he admits. “I used to paint a lot, but it’s been a long time.”

Tim sits up to brace his hand on the hood between them. “Got any pictures?”

Gerry sits up to pull his phone out of his pocket, shifting to tuck his ankle underneath his other leg and turn closer to Tim. There aren’t many pictures in his gallery to begin with, but he keeps what little there is separated into folders. Tim asks if there are any spooky paintings here, and Gerry reminds him that they wouldn’t catch on camera, but he’s done plenty. Selling those would require a particular clientele, so they often end up burning. Parting with the peaceful ones is always hard, but he can’t keep them all. He finds places for them, all sorts of somewheres.

The ones in the photos now are clean. All bright, abstract acrylic and impasto oil paintings, an array of pencil sketches from old books he’d left back in Morden. They’re still there, in the lockless cell of his old bedroom. He should go and get them. He wants to let Tim flip through them in person.

It’s a weighty thought to have in a Tesco car park. Tim might not know what it means when an artist passes someone a full sketchbook. Gerry doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s a lot like baring your throat.

Gerry holds his phone in between them with his wrist propped on his knee, which is propped up on Tim’s thigh. His shoulder is grounded against Tim’s rib cage, the arm behind him a solid thing to lean on.

While Tim zooms in to fill the screen with a sunset, Gerry reaches up with his free hand to pull his hair over the back of his neck and gather it over his opposite shoulder. He doesn’t want a curtain between them right now. He can feel Tim’s eyes on him in flickers.

They linger on his pulse point when Tim asks him how he feels about watercolours. Gerry tips his head, and answers that he likes using purples and reds.

When everything worthwhile has been shown and seen, Gerry finally checks the time. He sways away from Tim with a grimace, clicking his phone screen off.

“It’s three in the morning,” he states, arching back to coax his shoulder blades back into their natural place. “We ought to stop being in a Tesco car park.”

Tim lifts his empty hand to snap his fingers, but it turns out soundless. Cold hands. Gerry has the explicit impulse to reach out and show Tim how warm his are in comparison, but Tim is already sliding off the hood of the car to stand.

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

Tim crosses over to the recycling bin nearby and pushes his bottle through the slot. The bag must have been changed recently, because it hits the bottom with a heavy _thunk._ Gerry’s brow pinches as he tugs the handle of the driver’s side door.

“That sounded like it was still half-full.”

“Yeah,” Tim says simply. “I don’t do drunk sex.”

Gerry turns around. Tim’s eyes are easy to find when he’s standing this close. Inside them is a question that’s already been answered, but it’s nice to be asked again. His hands are empty and Gerry wants them around his waist. He wants his serious mouth to soften. To be the reason for it, and to see if he still tastes like lemonade.

Gerry tips his chin up. The car door clicks shut behind him.

Pinned, he yields. His spine complies with the press of Tim’s chest against his, hips held forward by his hands. The world shifts under his feet and he doesn’t stumble, even before his hovering arms come to settle along the ones keeping him steady. A soft sound is lost somewhere between his mouth and Tim’s, somewhere between a murmur and a sigh. 

And then some of that feeling is gone, and a late winter breeze brushes across his face. He keeps his eyes shut against it, trying now to remember the imprint of a warm mouth that wants him, and hold onto the fact that he’s still being held. Tim’s fingers come up to the edge of his jaw, tracing the sharp of it. Gerry tilts his head into the touch.

“You okay?”

The most Gerry can open his eyes at first is a sliver. He wets his lips and tries to blink, to register the different points of Tim’s face while all he can think about is the hand at the small of his back.

“Yeah,” he manages. “Sorry. I just… can’t remember the last time I kissed somebody sober.”

Something happens in Tim’s expression, but Gerry can’t make it out in the shadow cast between them. Maybe that was too much to say.

“Are you _really_ okay?”

Before he even answers, Tim starts to take a step backwards — breathing room, he might be thinking. Gerry grabs a hold of his sleeve.

“It’s not a bad thing.” Gerry trails his hand up his arm, curling his fingers around the bicep and frowning at his shoulder, and then back at his face. “Are you sure _you’re_ alright to—?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Tim grins, “I’m very creative.”

Before Gerry can argue creativity versus the cramped backseat of a car, Tim kisses him again. Gerry’s hands float from Tim’s sleeves to his hair, fingertips slipping into the loose strands. He wants to see him with his hair down. He wants to undo it himself.

Tim pulls away with a thoughtful look, and a press of his thumbs against the crest of Gerry’s hip bones.

“I saw plenty of inns driving up here.” He smiles, moonlight hanging on the breadth of his shoulders. “What do you say?”

Gerry shifts aside to reach behind him, arching away from the car to pull himself closer to Tim by his other hand in the jacket at the back of his neck. He watches Tim’s face register the _pop_ of the driver’s side door opening again, and grins back.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: canon-typical gertrude gerry's subsequent PTSD; minor injury; implied sexual content (tasteful fade to black)**
> 
> _"keyholder" - a person in control of access to a place, a thing, or themselves; autonomous (melanie being denied access to pinhole books, but granting access to her tapes / gerry being able to summon and dismiss gertrude, and being able to just leave whenever he wants / the key codes to get into Scope, the guide to the shorthand used there / consent metaphor for the entire ending, right down to gerry thinking about giving tim access to his sketchbooks)_
> 
> \+ GTCU melanie faceclaim is [tashi rodriguez](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/39265827986254155/)! and here's an [art ref for her, too](https://titanfalling.tumblr.com/post/639163533768130560/).  
> \+ also [this is my andy design](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/757127052834111520/765143295923454002/332600_j8UX6dak.png) using [this picrew](https://picrew.me/image_maker/332600)! you'll see him again soon!  
> \+ the link that adelard gives gerry leads to the thumbnail logo i made for Scope :'-)  
> \+ **PLEASE do not use Scope in anything! this is GTCU exclusive and i don't feel comfortable with the idea of it being borrowed. i'm working really hard and it'd actually really hurt me to see that.**  
>  \+ that said - yes, Scope is going to be _very_ relevant going forward.  
> \+ EDIT: there is now some scope lore that you can read here, in my statement fic [in the crosshairs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28491342), which i'd written for the [avatar of fear zine](https://avataroffearzine.tumblr.com/post/639155338580525056/)! 
> 
> PLEASE let me know what you think about this one in the comments! i wrote this in about 5 days and it's my favourite one so far, and i know we all love melanie and also sweet kisses.  
> [ [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) | [tumblr](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/) | [GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#) ]
> 
> ON DECK: **LOCKSTEP**  
>  i.e., a little break from plot so that tim can talk to sasha about uh... all of That up there. oh boy!


	6. LOCKSTEP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha lowers her papers and sighs. “What did you do?”
> 
> Still staring at her, he nods once to the left. Sasha turns her head slowly to follow his indication, only tearing her gaze from his when eye contact becomes a strain to her periphery. She glances at Gerry’s office door and then back to Tim, hoping fruitlessly for his expression to change. It sure doesn’t.
> 
> “…Oh, honey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack:** [oxford blood - autoheart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPUQgUprvME)
> 
> "how many times are you going to use an autoheart song, ron?" as many times as possible, next. (listen to this one, seriously, it's perfect for the second half.)
> 
> **CWs in the end notes!** please do check, i've changed the rating of the fic.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


“And neither of you want anything?”

Sasha lifts her travel mug at the same time that Tim lifts his. Still full. “You’ll have your hands full, Jon. Seriously, are you sure you don’t want one of _us_ to go up there for you?”

“Nonsense,” Jon sighs. He stretches his arms before readjusting his grip on his cane, sidling out from behind his desk. “I’m perfectly capable of acquiring my own tea, thank you. I did mean more whether you wanted anything out of the cupboards.”

Tim pats the lid of the giant tub of honey wheat braided twists that he’d brought in to keep in between their desks. “Quit fussing and get your tea. One of us will swing across the street later.”

Jon waves his own travel mug as he goes. Sasha smiles a little to herself as she takes a sip from hers; identical to theirs, of course, because Jon had unilaterally decided that carrying open mugs up and down the stairs was ‘inconvenient and dangerous.’ He’d spammed their group chat one day with pictures of sets of four he’d found while shopping, agonizing over which one to get until he found the sole set that had a black one in it. Sasha took the berry-coloured one, Tim the auburn, leaving Jon the rosy brown. A fairly classy set of travel mugs, all things considered.

“He’s ridiculous,” Sasha scoffs, turning back to the statement in her hands.

Tim doesn’t respond, but he leans forward on his elbows. There is a silence before Sasha glances up to see his hands folded, thumbs twiddling, and finds him staring directly at her with a… _grim_ sort of smile. Oh, boy.

“…Can I _help_ you?”

“I sure hope so.”

Well, this can’t be good.

Sasha lowers her papers and sighs. “What did you do?”

Still staring at her, he nods once to the left. Sasha turns her head slowly to follow his indication, only tearing her gaze from his when eye contact becomes a strain to her periphery. She glances at Gerry’s office door and then back to Tim, hoping fruitlessly for his expression to change. It sure doesn’t.

“…Oh, honey.”

Now he squeezes his eyes shut, nose wrinkled as he nods. “Yep.”

Sasha’s shoulders slump. The pity fades from her frown as she crosses her arms. “Okay, but did you have to say it like _that?_ You’re better than this, Tim.”

“First of all, no I’m not,” he laughs. “Second? You’re the one who set it up like that. I was morally and legally obligated to follow through.”

“It was low hanging fruit,” Sasha corrects. “I simply can’t abide.”

Tim drops his head onto the desk. “Leave me alone. I’m weak right now.”

“I can see that.” She leans forward to lower her voice. “Are you sure you want to talk about this right here? We’re not so far from the door.”

He snorts, shoulders jumping. “No way he’s waking up for another two hours, at _least.”_

“How do you— never mind, don’t answer that.”

“Oh, shut up.” Tim sits back up, smile lopsided. “It wasn’t me.” A pause. “This time.”

He doesn’t even dodge the pen she flings at him. They both watch it bounce off his chest and clatter onto the desk in resignation. Poetry.

Sasha rubs her forehead. “Alright, well, you don’t have that long before Jon’s back. Are we speedrunning this, or is this just you inviting me to Ernie’s later for a proper lament?”

“Jon’s going to run into some problem or another, like always.” Tim waves a hand, but his expression wavers. “I don’t know how long I want to drag this out anyway. It’s not like I’m looking to spill all of his personal stuff to you. No details.”

“Thank you for that,” she nods. “I do still have to look him in the eye every day, too.”

“Yeah, sorry.” His smile is weak. Sasha hates that she’s gotten used to it. “I didn’t exactly _plan_ for this to happen.”

“Can you define ‘this,’ please? What exactly am I working with here?”

His eyes pinch as he shrugs. “That’s… what I’m sort of struggling with?”

Ah. Sasha folds her hands. “Well… I’m going to make some guesses. Yes or no. Will that help?”

“Yes,” he sighs. “Thanks. Sorry, I’m— Yeah, go for it.”

“Okay.” Sasha points her hands at him. “Multiple times?”

Tim nods firmly. “Yes.”

“You caught feelings?”

“…Well, I wouldn’t put it like—”

“Right, so that’s a ‘yes.’ Be honest, Tim. Have you forgotten the Archives’ Golden Rule?”

Tim narrows his eyes at her, mouth pinched in some attempt at mischief that doesn’t last. He hangs his head. “I don’t know how this happened.”

_“I_ do,” she blurts, almost laughing. “I mean, to my knowledge, you didn’t just wake up and stop being borderline. I don’t think that’s how it works.”

He points a finger at her, head cocked. “Unless…”

She presses her lips together and raises her brows. “You want to waste Jon’s tea trip with the funnyman persona? Really? That hasn’t worked on me since we were seventeen.”

Now he just groans, sliding down in his chair to let his head hang off the back of it. “Maybe we should just save it for Ernie’s.”

Sasha shrugs and sits back. “I mean, if you buck up and get on with it, we could at least cover the prologue.”

She watches him stare at the ceiling for a moment, swiveling his chair side to side. Woof. She hasn’t seen him this smitten since Yasmin Tran when they were sixteen. The later years of secondary school had been swept up in bouncing between his parents’ houses until he found a flat he could afford working nights at a petrol station; no room on his plate for dating. From there, they’d only managed a few visits after starting uni, until— well. No one brings a date to a funeral.

“I’ve gotten better about that, you know.” Tim sits up a little, running a hand back over the top of his head. “Not _everything_ is that indeterminable slurry of _every emotion under the sun_ anymore. I _can_ tell the difference now.”

Sasha nods. “Yeah, this doesn’t look anything like the crush you had on my brother.”

“Exactly!” Tim throws up a hand. “That was easy. I was living on your couch, he was _occasionally_ in the same room as me, he wasn’t a _complete_ prick — shazam. Recipe for misguided infatuation.”

Ugh. She makes a sour face. “But it was _Mateo.”_

Tim glares. “I’m _saying_ it wasn’t real. That’s the point of the comparison.”

Sasha shakes it off. They need to get back on track.

This doesn’t look like something she can talk him out of. It doesn’t look like she _should_ talk him out of it, and she… doesn’t think she wants to. Just because _she_ would never sleep with a coworker doesn’t mean that Tim operates the same way. She knows how he copes. If something is going to keep him afloat, she’d rather be able to see what it is, and how they treat him.

Gerry’s a little… weird. But he seems nice enough, when he’s awake. He knows things, and he’s seen things, and he seems to _be_ things that Sasha can’t quite wrap her head around yet, but Tim has spent more time around him than she has. If he really sees something there, she’ll give _him_ the benefit of the doubt first. If he’s this torn up about it, there’s got to be a real reason.

“So what is it you’re struggling with?” she asks. “The fact that you’re sleeping with your boss, or the fact that you don’t feel as weird about sleeping with your boss as you think you ought to?”

“Have you forgotten the Archives’ _other_ Golden Rule, Sasha?” Tim leans mockingly forward. “If you call him _boss,_ he starts doing Kill Bill sirens.”

She rolls her eyes. “Funnyman. Turn it off. What’s the problem, Tim?”

Another groan. Tim’s hands slap down on his thighs in defeat. “I don’t know, I mean… I don’t _know,_ I think I’m… not struggling _enough,_ if that makes sense.”

There it is. Sasha inclines her head, prompting. “Go on.”

He lets out a long breath. “It’s just that we’re _really_ compatible. I mean, _really._ It sort of freaks me out. Even when I was trying to be all angry and task-oriented at the start, it’s just… way too easy to fall into a rhythm with him.”

“I’ve noticed that, yeah.” Sasha nods. “You have the same sense of humour.”

_“Right?_ G-d.” Tim covers his face with both hands. “It’s fantastic. I hate it.”

She doesn’t need to ask why anymore. “Can I just call things as I see them from now on? I don’t want you sitting on this for the rest of the day.”

_“Please,”_ he groans. “I need _someone_ to kick me in the head.”

Sasha clears her throat. There’s a tickle at the back of it that goes beyond sympathy.

“You feel guilty for being happy about something. You don’t think you’ve… grieved long enough to be allowed that. So, you’re trying to force yourself to be miserable and angry when you already know it’s not sustainable. Then you only end up angry at yourself for not being able to do it.”

Tim doesn’t move his hands, or lower his head. Sasha bites her tongue for a moment, waiting for an interruption. When she gets none, she continues.

“Do you really think you’re betraying Danny by enjoying somebody’s company?”

Tim’s jaw shifts. The words are more flat than heated. “I didn’t come here trying to enjoy _anything.”_

“No,” she agrees. “But if you do in the meantime, is that the worst thing in the world?”

“It sort of is, when you think about it.” He lowers his arms to cross them, eyes fixed on a ceiling panel above. “I mean, I wouldn’t have ever _met_ Gerry if not for…” Seven months, nearly, and he still can’t say it. He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t try. “That sound like an equal exchange to you?”

Sasha fights a wince. The corners of her eyes twitch anyway. “You know that’s not how anything works.”

“I do know that, yeah.” Quieter, now. “Still feels that way, though.”

A silence gathers, and she lets it. For just a moment.

“Walk me through the math you did to get to that place.”

Tim has his answer ready. “I applied for a job here because you gave me the idea at the funeral, when you told me where you’ve been working. I ended up _here_ because Gerry smelled _grief_ on me like some sort of _trauma bloodhound,_ and I must have bypassed being a normal-person amount of suspicious and hurt by that because now, all of a sudden, he’s the highlight of my entire day.”

Not even a mirthless laugh there. Sasha sits very still, watching him closely as he swivels his chair, listening to the soft metronome of his knees hitting the desk.

“I don’t want to believe Danny had to die for me to find something like that. Or for _us_ to get back in touch, or… you know, any of it. For _anything_ to feel _right.”_

Sasha’s throat hurts. There’s no use reaching for his hand or something when he’s moved both of them up to lace behind his head like that, as if he’s not talking about the greatest loss of his life. The detached persona is at least a little more conducive to a serious conversation than the funnyman.

“When you lose someone…” Sasha hesitates, lip caught between her teeth until it hurts enough to release it. “You’re not supposed to… stop living, too.”

Tim doesn’t try to argue with her. She doesn’t need to remind him that the last time _she_ saw Danny was at her parents’ funeral.

Sasha has done the grief tango. She knows how it works. There might have been a point back in November when she didn’t think she could guide him through it — didn’t know if she was still the person for it, if they could just fit back together like nothing had changed. Because they _have_ changed. Both of them have.

Tim isn’t the boy who helped her socially transition by growing his hair out, too; he’s the man who never cut it again. He’s not the _only_ person she could fathom trusting enough to let him touch her; he was just the first. He changed things for her, and now he’s changed, and Sasha still hasn’t made another friend like him.

It might be that he doesn’t need _guidance._ Just… somewhere he knows he can return to.

“I just feel guilty,” he admits. “Just needed to say it, I think. Get it out.”

Sasha hums. “I understand. It took me months to start returning phone calls. I think it’s… part of why I got harder to get in touch with. Maybe it’s my fault we fell out like that.”

Tim shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s _fault,_ really. It just… happens, it’s natural. I tried not to take it personally.”

‘Tried’ doesn’t mean ‘succeeded.’ Sasha sighs. She does wish she could reach for his hand, but now he’s undoing his hair. She watches it fall down over the back of the chair, watches him pull his fingers through it and tug free a few strands that got caught in one of his hearing aids. Remembers that the last time it had been cut was when his bitch of a mother took a pair of scissors to it, and Sasha had evened out the bottom for him in her own bathroom. It’s strange to feel loved through just his stubbornness, but he’s been growing it for thirteen years. It’s hard _not_ to feel loved by that.

It would be a profound tragedy if Tim Stoker were to ever stop letting himself love people that way. Sasha knows it won’t happen, is the thing.

“While we’re on the subject of things happening _naturally…”_ Sasha points her thumb at Gerry’s office door, brows up again. “I really can’t say I didn’t see that coming.”

Tim opens his mouth to respond before leaning sharply back in his chair, losing his grip on his hair in favour of waving a hand at something fluttering too close to his face. Sasha watches the moth disappear out of sight, blinking after it until her focus stutters back to Tim’s wince.

“That glaring?”

She clears her throat, and flicks her hand. “Not to Jon, I don’t think. You’re liberal enough with your banter that it comes across universal, but _I_ know the different genres.”

Tim smiles at her, finally, before his face falls. He starts to gather his hair again. “G-d, I feel so stupid.”

“What for?” she asks, genuinely. “For being interested in someone? I really don’t know what to tell you if you didn’t expect this to happen after the first or second museum date you took him on.”

“I never—” Tim’s eyes widen. “…Oh, my G-d, they were dates.”

“…Wow,” Sasha says. “I’m… Okay, I’m actually impressed. This is impressive. You are in rare form.”

“Shut it,” he tries to snap, but it comes out of a smile. It fades again. He keeps his eyes down as he pulls his hair back up into a new bun, leaning forward on his elbows once it’s finished. “It just feels weird doing that, and so soon, and that it’s _here,_ and that it’s _him,_ I mean… it’s supposed to be work, but the stupid _missions_ are _technically_ more like dates, and don’t tell me _‘it’s what Danny would wa—’”_

He pauses. Sasha stares back at him. In perfect sync, they agree; “No, it’s exactly what he’d want.”

_“Really,”_ Sasha laughs. “For you to be sitting here, nearly thirty, having a crisis over an _adult goth_ is just…” She breaks to laugh. “Well, first he would rip you to shreds over that. And then he’d just think it’s hilarious. And _then_ he’d congratulate you, and try to become Gerry’s best friend in order to ruin your life.”

Tim reclines to drag his hands down his face again. “Oh, _G-d,_ they’d be insufferable.”

The laughter doesn’t last long. That’s alright; Sasha hadn’t expected it to. Tim rubs his thumb along another painted nail. Dark red, today. Almost black.

“What should I do?” he asks. “I mean… what do _you_ think I should do here?”

Sasha sighs, leaning forward on her arms. “Honestly, Tim? Just go with it. I don’t see any going back now for you guys. You’re kind of inseparable and _pretty_ hellbent on how this isn’t even a real job. _And_ we’re all ‘stuck’ here, aren’t we? So you might as well make the most of it.”

“Well, I don’t want it to be that we’re just sticking together because there’s no other option, and we’re a last resort.” The pause he takes fills Sasha’s stomach with dread. His voice is smaller when he finds it again. “…You don’t think that’s really it, do you?”

“Oh, my G-d, no,” she says quickly. “I’ve seen how he looks at you, Tim. Seriously, _just_ go with it.”

The sigh he lets out is so genuinely relieved that she almost wants to physically shake him. “Okay, good. I was worried I was being really dramatic again.”

“Yeah, no. He’s even less subtle than you are.” Sasha rubs her temples, eyes shut. “Like I said, I sort of did see it coming. I just didn’t know you’ve _been_ sleeping together since— G-d, wait, when did it start?”

Tim gives a comical grimace. “…Remember when I came back here with stitches?”

Sasha does the math. “…Tim, that was _three weeks ago.”_

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

She takes off her glasses to rub her eyes. “Well, now I’m just impressed that you sat on it for this long.”

“I think I’ve shown some real personal growth,” he says.

“Oh, yes, since about January? You know, when you lasted all of a half an hour before running to tell me this entire Institute is a supernatural mob front?”

Tim gestures with both hands, nodding emphatically. “See? We can track my progress chronologically. There is _visible_ development!”

She rolls her eyes again before they fix on the entrance to the Archives. What sort of conniption is Jon having up in the breakroom that they’ve been able to talk for so long? Whatever it is, she hopes it lasts just a little bit longer. Tim may look like he’s leveling out, but she can tell there’s more he needs to talk through.

“So, what do you want out of this, then?” she asks. “Are you still trying to keep it casual?”

He barks a laugh. Either he doesn’t think it’ll wake Gerry, or his hearing aids need a battery change. “That was the plan for about thirty seconds.”

Sasha whistles. “And you’re both on the same page on that?” 

“Yeah, I think so, but…”

“But?”

Tim’s eyes drift along the desk, smile waning. “I think he’s… really lonely, actually. I don’t want to take advantage of that, or go too far.”

Sasha frowns. “How do you mean?”

Tim bites his lip for a second, shaking his head. “I don’t want to say too much, I just… Sasha, I really don’t think he has much of _anything._ I mean _really, anything._ You’ve been here long enough to see it, right?”

It’s not a secret around here, no. They really do just sit here surrounded by these things that Gerry has apparently been living in forever. If nothing else, Sasha has picked up on the fact that he survives on the bare minimum. She’s seen the way his eyes go distant, if talk of terror goes too far. She’s heard him laugh over things that make her skin crawl, and not because he found it funny.

Tim fiddles with the gold ring on his right hand, mouth twisted to the side. “I just feel this… responsibility, I guess. To not be just another thing that hurts him. But I don’t know how to be someone’s _only_ thing.”

“Did he ask you to be?”

He shakes his head again, no hesitation. “No, not at all.”

“So don’t assume. Give him some time.” Sasha turns her head up to look at the fluorescent lightbulbs overhead, shrugging a shoulder. “Maybe you’re not the _only,_ but just… the first.”

Tim softens at that, and she can see it’s for her. She smiles back at him.

“You should really talk to _him_ about this, though. But don’t wake him up or anything, just… think about it first. And—”

The sound of the door opening cuts her thoughts in half, joined by Jon’s telltale ‘tea time went terribly’ grousing.

“G-d, what a _nightmare,”_ he spits as he hobbles inside, and Tim sits up like he’s just been cut down from being dangled over a shark tank. Sasha sits back, too, and puts it all away.

“What did you do this time?”

“Over-steeped it.” Jon sits down at his desk as heavily as he sighs, all but slamming his travel mug back down onto the desk. “I got distracted reading an article while I was waiting. It was like _drinking a penny.”_

Sasha and Tim both groan in unison. They’re past glaring at each other for it.

“How does this keep happening to you?” Tim asks. “It’s only tea.”

“I don’t _know,”_ Jon sighs. “I think because I’m so used to making masala chai at home— a-a big batch of it all at once, with all the herbs and spices. Any process _less_ involved, I lose interest and it turns up ruined.”

Makes sense. Sasha reaches for her travel mug almost in acknowledgment, sipping to omit a verbal response. Tim seems to wait for her to be finished to do the same thing, his eyes drifting to the open side of the room.

Jon squints at Gerry’s office door, consciously lowering his voice. “Is he still asleep?”

“Yep,” Tim says, reaching for his own papers. “Let him be.”

That seems to be enough for Jon. Sasha collects her papers again as he does and gets back to work, glancing up at Tim every now and then. He keeps his eyes down for the most part, never looking up at the door himself. Not anxious, or uncertain. Not impatient for attention, or proof that Gerry hadn’t just stopped existing in the brief time they spent apart.

Lockstep, then. Mm.

Sasha can’t think of a reason to discourage him. Not now, when he needs as much incentive to let himself live as he can get his hands on. If Gerry is a part of that now, Sasha will just keep an eye on him from her place as Tim’s first, but not only, home.

It’s her turn on the recorder.

  
  


───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

  
  


By the time Tim gets back to bed, Gerry is half-dressed again. He’s looping a long chain over his head and pulling his hair out from underneath it as Tim crosses the room, arranging a pendant over his still-bare breastbone. He looks up with a sheepish smile as Tim settles beside him, sniffing against the back of his wrist.

“What’s that?” Tim asks, handing him the glass he’d left the room for. 

Gerry takes it from him in a loose grip, fingers faintly trembling. His other hand stays at his chest, pinching the pendant while he takes a long drink of water. The glass is half-drained by the time he stops for a breath and holds the pendant up to the lamplight; a gold hamsa, with a carved, turquoise iris set in the palm.

Tim cranes his head to take his shadow off of it and see, lounging on an elbow to face him. “Important enough to put it back on before your shirt?”

Gerry just nods, and goes back to sipping his water. Tim can estimate by now how long it’ll take for Gerry to get his voice back. He’ll happily fetch a hundred glasses of water one by one if it helps to keep the mood drop at bay.

He waits with his hand on Gerry’s thigh for this glass to be empty, rolling back to place it on the bedside table. Gerry stays still in his crooked way against the headboard, eyes shut and breathing carefully. He lets Tim turn his wrist over and press two fingers to where his pulse still flutters too fast to let him stand up, or stop shaking quite yet. Good shaking, he’s said before, but still. Tim worries before he lets himself get too smug about it.

“What’s it mean?”

Gerry’s brow twitches, but he doesn’t open his eyes. “Don’t know what the hamsa means?”

“What does it mean to _you,”_ Tim clarifies. He trails his fingertips along the inside of Gerry’s forearm. “Since I’m pretty sure whatever meaning _you_ have for it isn’t going to be on Wikipedia. I never took you for being very religious.”

“I’m not,” Gerry mumbles. Tim’s entire chest aches. “Dekker sent it with a letter.”

“Dekker?” Tim repeats. “Why?”

Gerry shrugs limply before he seems to force himself to open his eyes and take a deeper breath, other arm raising up to push his fingers through his hair.

“Thought I could use an extra anchor,” he says, mingling with a stronger sigh. The next one dwindles into a smaller sound as he stretches. “Sort of a two-in-one. Reminds me of somebody else I’ve been thinking about lately.”

Tim’s heart twinges. An old flame? A _current_ flame? Shut up, Stoker. “Oh, yeah?”

Gerry nods, his arm falling down over his middle. “From a long time ago, yeah. Just someone I knew.”

“Gonna have to give me more than that if you want me to really understand.” Tim smiles, tracing the eye on the lowest joint of Gerry’s thumb. “Unless you’re still incoherent, of course. I can wait.”

He grins at the ineffectual swat of Gerry’s hand. Tim has watched him take out rabid taxidermy monsters without breaking a sweat, and here he is entirely boneless. It’s _painfully_ endearing. So is the way Gerry looks down at the necklace again, turning it between his fingers like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever been given. His words seem very carefully chosen when he finally answers.

“He was my best friend.”

The twinge becomes a sharp crack. So, either this person betrayed him, left him, or… something happened. Tim can’t say he would find the latter all that surprising, but it’s not the ending that he wants to hear about.

“Must have meant a lot to you, if you still think about him. What made him so special?”

Gerry gestures vaguely. “He got me out of the house for two whole weeks once. We weren’t even really friends before that, just… people that crossed paths every now and then. Little older than me, handful of years. Bulletproof, seemed like.” He flips the hamsa in his fingers, pausing to look it in the eye. “Think the first time I’d ever felt safe falling asleep was in his crappy student dorm.”

Tim lets out a slow breath. He’s thankful that _someone_ managed to give Gerry that first experience, but the past tense of it all just takes all the celebration right out of it. He nudges Gerry’s side to prompt for his attention, trying for a smile.

“Hey, if you swap out ‘student dorm’ for ‘Sasha’s couch,’ we’ve got a running theme going.”

“He might be dead,” Gerry adds. “I don’t actually know for sure.”

Well. Less relatable. Tim doesn’t know what to say to that, so for a moment, he just lets himself be quiet.

When he looks up again, Gerry is staring over the other side of the bed, chewing his lip. Like he’s about to get up, or thinks he _should_ get up, and he’s steeling himself to leave when his legs are still weak because it’s just what happens next. Tim’s hand drifts towards the hamsa, knuckles skimming Gerry’s sternum.

“What’s your rush?” he asks, and Gerry doesn’t look like he has an answer. He turns his head without lifting his eyes, watching Tim’s hand flatten against his chest, thumb brushing over the corner of the eye inked below his collarbone. His heart is still thudding hard enough to be felt underneath. Too hard to let him go just yet.

“Lie back down for a while,” Tim says. “You don’t have to leave.”

Gerry doesn’t have an argument, either. He sinks back down to Tim’s level and sighs again in tangible relief, his hair a mess on the pillow. Tim’s hand moves up to his face, smoothing loose strands back from his forehead. Gerry watches from under his shadow until Tim leans down to kiss him. His mouth is slow and off-tempo, but he lifts his chin with the same eagerness he does when he’s more alert.

The thing is, Gerry kisses like he can’t believe you’re kissing him. Like he’ll never be kissed again, and when he pulls back it’s like he’s forgiving you for stopping. He lingers in a hug like it’s some sort of goodbye, but it always starts like he’s not expecting it. He doesn’t say much, unless he’s saying something so heavy that it should crash right through the floor, and he always sounds so unconcerned, like none of it matters. Except for when he looks at you like he needs you to exist, but he doesn’t tell you why.

Tim has never met a person who conveys so much conflict in such small actions, _every time._ He’s never had an ache in his chest stay so constant, barring the black hole it became over the summer, and he doesn’t know what to _do_ with it other than keep trying to give Gerry enough contact that he stops acting like it’s some kind of miracle.

Because Gerry doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it. It’s so subtle that Tim almost wonders if he’s imagining it, bloviating things to make himself feel more important, but — there’s no way he could make this up. It’s so genuine it hurts.

Gerry hangs onto his wrist when he draws back, his expression contented and hazy. Tim is just as pleased to wait until he feels like enough of a person again to have a conversation. What is there to mind about a look like that?

“Do you have a best friend now?” Tim asks him. “Tell me about the good people you know.”

Gerry’s smile flickers flat. Oh.

Nope. No, that can’t be it. Tim smiles again, a little desperately.

“…Come on, you _have_ to have friends outside of the Archives, right? Dekker doesn’t count.”

“No, I know,” Gerry says. “I’m thinking. Give me a second.”

Tim drops his head down onto Gerry’s shoulder to hide his grimace. “You don’t have to answer. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

He relaxes when Gerry’s hand comes up over the back of his head, fingers nudging into his hair. “It’s okay. I have an answer. I just don’t know how satisfying it’ll be.”

“That’s not really why I’m asking.” Tim fits his arm more securely around Gerry’s middle, pressing a hand along the mattress to pin it underneath his ribs. “I just want to hear you talk about something.”

He fails to flick his hair out of his face when he tilts his head back. Gerry moves it over his shoulder for him, but makes no move to give him back the elastic he’s still got around his own wrist. Tim doesn’t ask for it back, more interested in watching his face when he looks up to the ceiling, the stud under the right side of his mouth wiggling around with the press of his tongue.

“Pick where I should start, then: who I’ve known the longest, or who I last spoke to.”

Tim hums. “Known the longest. Assuming you still have contact.”

“I could, if I wanted to.” Gerry’s arm drapes around the back of Tim’s shoulders, fingertips tracing the muscle like he knows the outline of the blackwork there already. “Her number hasn’t changed. She’s still at home.”

“What’s her name? How do you know her?”

“Tazia,” Gerry says. “Technically, I’ve _known_ her for most of my life. But I could count on both hands the amount of times we’ve spoken for more than five minutes over the phone. Outside of being stuck together while our parents did business.”

Tim tries not to sigh. He doesn’t want to ask what kind of business. Just about Gerry’s people. “When’s the last time you called her?”

Gerry worries at his piercing. “About five years ago.”

Christ. “How do you know she’s still at home?”

“I know,” Gerry says, with finality. “She’s never going to leave.”

Tim’s brow creases. “How can you be so sure of that? It’s been _five years._ A lot can change in five years.”

“Not this.” Gerry doesn’t even bother to shake his head. His thumb traces perfectly along the ink banded around Tim’s bicep, even with his eyes still on the ceiling. “She’d already changed.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Tim whispers.

Gerry’s head tips towards him. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Tim kisses his collarbone. “But can you explain?”

He feels Gerry’s rib cage expand and shrink on a sigh that doesn’t seem big enough. Tim has to wonder if this is too much to ask, too fast. But then he thinks back to the booth at Ernie’s a few days ago, gushing to Sasha over drinks once the bulk of the crisis wore off. Maybe Gerry’s like him, and just needs prompting. A good train of thought needs unobstructed tracks.

“We made a pact when we were twelve.” Gerry faces the ceiling again. “To let our family lines end with us.”

Tim can’t help exhaling as loud as he does. The biggest promise he made when he was twelve was to his mother, that he wouldn’t climb trees anymore. The second he got the cast off his arm, he went right back to proving to Danny that he could always go higher.

“What sort of thing was she trying to get out of?”

Gerry lifts his hand from Tim’s back to let it fall again. Again, Tim could _swear_ his fingers deliberately find the edges of his tattoos. Gerry smooths his palm over the shiver when he feels it, and keeps talking like he doesn’t even realize what it was for.

“Her family has this… messed up estate. Most of the land is just their private cemetery, but it has this massive, sentient garden planted over it, _barely_ contained by this huge, stone wall. Needs constant tending, or else it’ll overgrow. I still don’t know what would happen if it did, or if it’s just some lie they told her to _condition_ her into staying.” Finally, a little change to his expression. Just a curl of his upper lip. “Another reason why I can’t stand the Corruption.”

G-d. Wait. _“Sentient_ garden? Like… full-on _‘feed me, Seymour?’”_

Gerry hums in affirmation. “I almost got dragged in once. She got into trouble for lopping the vine.”

Something hateful rises in Tim’s throat. He swallows it down, buries his face in Gerry’s shoulder. Gerry’s hand moves back into his hair. 

“She was going to wait until her parents were buried in it. As soon as she was the only one left, she’d let it rot. Run away to Paris, and I’d meet her there.”

_Ouch._ “What was your side of the deal?”

“I don’t remember.” Gerry shrugs under Tim’s cheek. “Just know I gave up on it quick. So did she, but we never told each other. Any time we spoke outside of trips to Italy, it was if her parents needed some book from my mum. She’d ring twice and hang up, and I’d wait by the phone for it to go again before my mum could get it. Sort of stupid.”

Tim would call it sad before he called it stupid. Gerry probably wouldn’t take a shine to that. “So, what happened five years ago?”

“My mum,” Gerry says, and only that. “I called Tazia from a phonebox a few months after it really sank in. She was the one person I thought might understand, you know, being… trapped, all over again. But she didn’t.”

“She got comfortable,” Tim guesses.

Gerry shifts to stretch his arm up over his head. Tim loosens his grip to let him twist at the waist, running his hand over his side with a sympathetic hiss when his spine pops and clicks. There’s an exchange of mutual, muffled laughter through shut-lipped smiles as Gerry settles back down, turning towards Tim to touch up his arm again.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “So, I haven’t talked to her since.”

“Understandable.” Tim nudges his knee in between Gerry’s, hand trailing down his hip to the back of his thigh. “Who’s next on the list?”

Gerry lets him hike his leg over his hip, draping his arms back around his shoulders. “I don’t know if it counts.”

“At this point, Ger, I think just about _any_ human interaction would count. _Anyone_ whose name you know.”

He laughs at that, at least. “Can I submit fake names for assessment?”

Tim’s eyes fall shut in pleading. “Did _you_ make up the fake names, or is that all they gave you?”

“It’s all I have.”

“Then yes, the board will accept that.”

Gerry’s fingers are warm against the shell of his ear, gently untangling a strand of hair from his hearing aid. “I’ll just go back to chronological. I was friendly with my tattoo artist. Was her first big project towards the end of her apprenticeship.”

Tim reaches up to brush Gerry’s hair back over his shoulder, thumb swiping over the tiny eye nested behind his cheekbone. “Did you go to the same one for all of these?”

“Course of about two years.” Gerry turns his head to kiss the inside of Tim’s wrist. Tim’s heart collapses at the walls. “I like routine when I can get it.”

Noted. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Gerry reaches up to tap the eye at his jaw, curling his fingers around the side of Tim’s hand like it doesn’t even occur to him that Tim’s entire chest cavity could be crumbling to bits over it. “These were my last ones. Early 2012.”

Alright, that’s not _tragically_ long ago. Tim pulls Gerry’s hand over to kiss the ridge of his knuckles. “Ever consider popping back around to say hi? I doubt you’d need to book an appointment, if she’s that familiar with you.”

For a second, it looks like Gerry is fighting some kind of imaginary collapse, too, but the words that come out of his mouth make Tim second guess whether it’s the same kind as his.

“Nah. She probably thinks I’m dead.”

Tim blinks rapidly for a moment. “That’s one hell of a conclusion to jump to.”

“Well, considering the extensive burns I walked in with, I could hardly blame her.” Gerry scoffs down at their hands. Still, he rubs his thumb along the backs of Tim’s fingers. “Abby was a little like Rosie, where she just took all the weirdness in stride and pretended not to see it. I don’t blame her for not being able to that time, but it… _did_ make it feel like I’d lost something. The clean slate I’d had there, everything. Which kind of just showcases how much I let it win.”

Tim knows what _it_ is without asking. If he had to pick the one he hates the most, the Desolation would be first in line. Even just this would be reason enough.

That first night in Ipswich, Gerry had warned him about his scars before they even found an inn. Said they were the type of scars that usually make a person scared to touch him, and he understood if Tim would change his mind once he saw the extent. That he could ask questions if he needed to. It had sounded almost like he was trying to sell a car with broken parts, only barely holding himself back from promising frantically that it could still run. He looked like he had already accepted rejection until Tim kissed him backwards onto the bed.

Tim’s only question had been whether there were any that Gerry didn’t want him to touch. It was impossible with the burns — faint as they are, but _everywhere_ — but he’d still _known_ where they came from. He kicks himself a little for not putting the timeline together himself just now.

“Is there anyone after that?” he asks, instead of dwelling. “Who gave you the fake name?”

Gerry doesn’t lift his eyes, or undo their hands. He’s angled his shoulders back a little, but his leg is still hooked around Tim’s hip. Still close.

“Nelly,” he says, after a silence. “Someone I knew when I was just starting out and had no idea what the hell I was doing. Showed me the ropes a bit, how to be safe.”

Tim hums. If his other arm wasn’t jammed under the pillows, he’d play with Gerry’s hair. “Kit to your Vivian?”

Gerry tosses his head back to laugh. “Not even _remotely,_ but— basically?” He rocks forward with his hand on Tim’s shoulder, eyes squinted and grinning. _“Pretty Woman_ is literally where we got the ‘no kissing’ rule, too. They made me take my leg measurements so I could quote that one bathtub scene.”

Tim grins back, marveling at him. “‘Eighty-eight inches of therapy?’”

Gerry shifts his leg up to squeeze around Tim’s waist, still snickering as he drapes his arm around his neck. “I have _very_ long legs.”

“You do,” Tim laughs, running his hand along Gerry’s thigh for emphasis. “I’d definitely say this constitutes therapy. I actually think we should just reenact that whole scene sometime.”

It’s Gerry who kisses him, this time. Tim presses forward to nudge him onto his back, mouth drifting along Gerry’s cheek when he tightens both his legs around Tim’s waist and then laughs too hard at his own joke to participate. Tim kisses his neck until the giggling fades down into murmurs, until Gerry takes his face in both hands to draw him back up.

“Sounds like that was a really good thing for you,” Tim notes, resting his forehead against Gerry’s. Gerry’s thumbs swipe out from the corners of his eyes.

“I miss it,” Gerry admits. He moves his hands to push Tim’s hair back from where it falls like water around them. “And Nelly was a good friend. I know they probably think about me sometimes, wonder where I am.” 

Tim keeps his head still to let Gerry gather his hair into elastic around his wrist, no complaints in mind for how messy it already feels. If Gerry can feel _his_ heart beating through his chest, he doesn’t say so. They both know he doesn’t have Gerry’s excuse.

“It’s not that I don’t think I meant anything.” Gerry gives the loose ponytail a gentle tug to tighten it, twining the end of it around his hand. “I was just… too busy burning, for a while.”

To _hell_ with the Desolation.

Tim won’t press the idea of Gerry reaching out to Nelly any time soon. There’s acceptance of an ending in Gerry’s face that Tim doesn’t think needs to be there, but it isn’t for him to say so. It occurs to him that he just doesn’t want Gerry to look like that if he ever tells a story about him.

Ah. Well, that must be it, then.

Tim kisses him again, and one more time.

Gerry’s arms stay looped around him when he tips over to the side to take some of his weight off of him. Tim lifts his head a bit to let Gerry crack his shoulder once before nestling back down, his hand touching down his side with soothing in mind. His fingers brush past the edge of a raised scar stemming from the small of Gerry’s back, thumb hooking idly onto the elastic of his waistband. Gerry sighs. His palm is hot against the back of Tim’s neck.

“How are you feeling?” Tim asks. Probably as good a time as any.

Gerry is staring up at the ceiling again. His heel slips down the back of Tim’s thigh to anchor behind his knee. “I’ve never talked about any of this before. It feels like I shouldn’t be.”

“Why?” Tim asks. “I’m the one who asked you to talk to me.”

He shakes his head minutely. “Just seems too much. I’m probably better when I’m _not_ talking.”

Tim gets a chill so strong he feels it buzz in the bones of his fingers. He pushes himself back up into Gerry’s line of sight to frown at him. “Hey, absolutely not. Don’t assume I’d think that low of _anybody,_ first off. Least of all you.”

Gerry drops his arms, taken aback. “That’s not what I—”

“I know what you meant,” Tim says plainly. “I’m just saying it’s not true.”

Gerry just stares at him, his eyes moonlike in an otherwise unreadable face. He doesn’t look like he even _expects_ reinforcement, much less like he’s fishing for it. Tim takes that as all the more reason to give it to him anyway.

“Okay, when I think about the stories you’ve told me, the first one that comes to mind is that relief plaque you vandalised on that uni campus. You literally didn’t even _go to school_ there, but you heard some students talking about a denied petition to have this random racist shitbag taken down and just decided to go _drill a canvas into the wall over it_ in the dead of night.” Tim doesn’t even try to keep the laugh from tumbling out, grinning even as his brow creases up in amazement. “Like, what _is_ that? If I’d seen that happen when I was still in _my_ punk phase, I’d have been tripping all over myself trying to find out who you were so I could be your friend.”

Gerry smiles. There’s something bright in its smallness, in his eyes. Tim shakes his head at the affection that wells up in his throat, for a moment unsure of where to put his hands when there are so many ways he wants to touch him. He settles for just under the ridge of his jaw, palm to pulse. Entertains the juvenile hope that it’s actually thrumming that hard because of him.

“You get that I want to know you, right?”

“Really?”

To hell with it. Sasha asked him what he wanted out of this. The longer he looks down at Gerry, lying here bewildered underneath him, the harder it is for Tim to convince himself he doesn’t already know. He only wonders if that will catch Gerry just as blind as their first kiss, even after all that statement of intention.

“Yes,” he says, clearly. “Is that alright with you?”

Instead of answering directly, Gerry’s hands drift back down to the hamsa. He lifts it up to look at it, and holds it between them.

“Dekker said that if you wear one of these with the hand facing up, it’s to protect against evil. You know, really active. But he sent me one that faces upside down.”

Oh, so that’s how it is. Tim shifts to recline back on his side of the mattress with a sigh, shoulder sore from propping himself up for so long. “Are you about to outmatch me in the sap department?”

Gerry nods, smiling without looking up. “I am. Do you know what it means upside down?”

“Would _definitely_ rather see where you’re going with this than guess.”

“Bastard,” Gerry laughs. “He said it’s to open you up to good things from the universe, welcome them into your life. Good luck, answered prayers.”

Seeing it coming did nothing to prepare him. Tim smiles through a wave of lightheadedness. “Think you owe something to it, then?”

Gerry shakes his head now. “No.”

“Right, right. You’re not religious.”

“No,” Gerry repeats, dropping the pendant. “By the time he sent it, I’d already found you.”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: open discussion of sex (just in terms of figuring out a relationship); discussion of grief, loss, and death; mentions of child abuse; gerry's bad time in the burn unit; mentions of sex work**  
>    
> _"lockstep" - routine, habit, practice; being in sync with another person_
> 
> \+ the movie that gerry and tim make reference to is "pretty woman," which yes, is about a sex worker! i've always written gerry as having done some of that to keep himself afloat during mary's haunting. it's not a big shocking plot twist, it's just a job people do!  
> \+ [here is a reference of nelly](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/662580410542325770/768959303495057438/nelly.png) using [this picrew](https://picrew.me/image_maker/332600)!  
> \+ and in the spirit of lore, i've written about tazia before in somewhat of a prequel to this, [root & branch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242255)! and [the lovely kate @gay-constellation drew her here, too](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/628268912822337536)! in this house we love tazia — expect to see her here later ;-)  
> \+ in the meantime, can anyone guess who gerry's best friend was that he mentioned first? guess in the comments<3
> 
> please yell at me about this one i have a LOT of feelings.  
> [ [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) | [tumblr](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/) | [GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#) ]
> 
> ON DECK: **MOONSPILL**  
>  i.e., jon and sasha find something unexpected in gerry's office.


	7. MOONSPILL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Gerry,” Sasha hears herself cut in. “Can I talk to you?”
> 
> Everyone goes still. Even the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead seems to stifle and hush. Gerry looks at her and stares, like he does sometimes when he thinks she isn’t looking back. Rather — like he knows when she does, and doesn’t care to stop. Like he’s looking for something, and hasn’t found it yet.
> 
> “Yeah, sure.” He tilts his head. “My office?”
> 
> “No.” Said too quickly, too coiled. “Somewhere alone, please. More alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **soundtrack** : [into the unknown - aurora](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcDYP0oDB5A)
> 
> **CWs in the end notes!**

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

“Statement, um… statement ends.”

Jon’s finger slips against the stop button on the tape recorder. For a moment, his hands stutter uncertainly in front of him — take off his glasses? Drop the papers? He has to drop the papers to take off his glasses. That should come first, yes. Papers, glasses, and then he can drop his face into his palms. Three steps. Easy.

The moment he does, his stomach turns. There’s a feeling at the back of his neck not unlike there already has been from time to time, but now— now. Now, it feels worse. Feels — tangible, feels like he read something off the page and into the room. That can’t be possible, except— except.

Except that he knows it is.

Had he taken his meds today?

Better check. Better check. Better check.

He’s wrist-deep in his bag when a presence in the doorway causes him so much alarm that he jerks backwards in his chair with a gasp. He rolls back from his desk and drags his bag with him, the sound of small items clattering to the tile clashing disorientingly with the feeling of its remaining weight hitting his sore knee. His hand flies up to clutch at his chest, the other scrambling to pull the bag onto his lap without dropping anything else onto the floor.

“Jesus _Christ,_ Jon!” Sasha’s hands grip the doorframes on either side of her, hanging onto them to keep herself back and still through his scare. “What’s the matter with you? I was barely gone twenty minutes.”

“Sorry, I-I’m sorry.” Jon grabs his bag to shove it back onto his desk with a bit more force than necessary, eyes cast down and away from her as he scans the floor for what had fallen. Ah, yes, his pill case. “You startled me, is all.”

“Yeah, I can _see_ that.” Sasha crosses over to their desks, peeling her coat off to sling over the back of her chair. She frowns at his biryani, untouched in the tiffin box. “You didn’t eat your lunch?”

Jon blinks at the food. Oh. He’d taken it out with the intention of eating it, yes, but— “I got distracted.”

Sasha sits down and folds her hands. “With?”

“Case number… 9721207,” Jon recites, squinting at the top of the file as he puts his glasses back on. “I was scouring to see how we should tab it, but then I thought… I-I wanted to see what might happen if I… read past the warp mark.”

Not unusual, considering they need to _read_ the statements to decipher their roots. He looks down at the tape recorder in indication of why this is different.

Sasha’s brows twitch down. “That why you look so rattled?”

Compulsively, Jon reaches up to smooth his hair down around his ears. It’s been a while since his last trim. There’s no reason to fib now. “I… Yes, probably.”

“Do we know how we’re tabbing it?” Sasha reaches out a hand for the statement. Jon holds up the folder to show her before he gives it over; he’s already stuck an aqua blue Post-It tab on the right hand side.

“Beholding, no question. It’s literally about feeling watched.” He leans over the desk to point out a sentence in the ninth paragraph. “And this — ‘ _Perhaps you could say that my curiosity was the fault that brought this on me?’_ That— That feels thematic, as well. Curiosity.”

Sasha flicks the white tab underneath. “Why did you mark it Lonely, too?”

“Ah— That’s tentative, I’m not sure about it. I might be reading too much into it, but see here… _‘The place was so quiet, a lonely testament to Christopher’s isolation.’_ It just… stuck out to me as I was reading, before I—”

_“Read_ it.”

Jon lowers the file to push his glasses up on his nose. “Yes, exactly.”

Sasha sucks her teeth for a moment. She pulls the statement over with her as she leans back in her chair, eyes narrowed as she scans the top of the first page. She flicks the plastic tab at the top of the folder; a red arrow, stuck next to a green one.

“What’s the object?”

“A hand mirror,” Jon says. “But actually, what really stuck with me about this is… hang on, can you hand it back to me, please?”

She does, and he readjusts himself in his chair again to find the paragraph he’s thinking of. A nauseous wave stops him from reading again, a shudder crawling up his back like a xylophone trill.

“What’s the matter?” 

Sasha is watching him closely. He really wishes she wouldn’t, right now.

“Sorry,” he says again, looking down and away from her. “I just— It felt… I felt something, reading it aloud. I-It just hit me, looking at it again with the intention of reading more than one line.”

“I can just read it myself, Jon.” She holds her hand out again.

He shakes his head. “No, I think you’d better not. It’s committed to tape, it’s finished.”

Gerry has said that he’d handle full recordings of the verified statements, and not to read past whatever it takes to see whether or not something takes digitally. He’d been candid about it: reading statements would affect all of them differently, and that as the Archivist, he’s the only one equipped to handle it. He hadn’t said it in a way that implies the rest of them are incompetent, but there was an air to the way he _did_ say it that left Jon doubtful. Why shouldn’t they be able to disperse more of the work equally, wouldn’t that help with how little Gerry seems to want to record them in the first place? What made the rest of them _ill-equipped?_

There was only one way to find out, if Gerry wouldn’t elaborate. Though, now that he’s gone and done it, Jon isn’t too sure he’s done anyone a favour.

“I didn’t mean aloud,” Sasha clarifies. She’s raising her eyebrow at him again, head inclined. “What did you feel, reading it?”

Jon opens his mouth, wordless and lost. “I— I’m not sure how to describe it. Maybe nothing? Just… uneasy. It might just be what it was about.”

The other brow now. “A hand mirror?”

“A hand mirror that left a woman with an omnipresent feeling of being watched after she saw some horrible _thing_ in the reflection behind her, until she suffered a mental breakdown on live television.”

Jon drops the folder back onto the desk. Sasha reaches for the folder now that he’s abandoned it. He lets her, rubbing his eyes under his glasses.

“Oh,” she says, after a few moments of reading. “Wow. Okay, I see why you’d flag it green.” 

The system they’ve devised to reorganize the Archives is largely colour and placement based. There’s a chart pinned up on the cork side of the bulletin board hanging up on the wall next to Gerry’s office door, with Smirke’s Fourteen listed in two columns and enough space to put a uniquely coloured Post-It tab on the edge next to each of them. Underneath is another paper with four plastic arrow tabs denoting the major subjects featured in statements — blue for someones, yellow for somewheres, red for somethings, green for… _creatures,_ somewhere between _someone_ and _something._

Being able to order Post-It tabs in all those colours was something of a joyful moment for Jon, but he can’t say he’s entirely happy with the way they’ve been assigned. Some of the words don’t _match,_ but it was his synesthesia against Gerry’s. It’s a losing battle, as evidenced by the mocking stick figure that Tim drew of him underneath his written complaint, with the colour tab for the Slaughter stuck to his forehead.

So far, Gerry has done exactly nothing to intervene, even when the dry-erase side of the board seems to be designated for tormenting _him_ as much as Jon is targeted by the “Days Since Last Tea Incident” counter. There is no number today in the blank space where it says “The Archivist Will Be Asleep For __ Hours” because he and Tim are out on their first ‘mission’ since starting to dial back on how often they leave the Institute. Jon doesn’t actually remember where they’ve gone.

“Yes,” he says, shaking his head. “He’d written books on ancient myths and fetishes, and— alright, that is _deeply_ immature, Sasha.”

Sasha waves a hand, berry pink smile bitten tight. “Go on, go on.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “He had come here _numerous times,_ no doubt to crosscheck his research with ours about the items we keep up in storage. I want to know what he was looking into, a-and what he might have been studying right around the time of his death. He had a _stroke_ at thirty-eight, isn’t that strange?”

“You’re the last person I’d have ever imagined suggesting that someone died of a magical stroke.”

“Well, I’m not saying it was—” A frustrated noise catches in his throat. He centers himself with a sharp breath. “I _mean._ It might not have _been_ a stroke at all. _You_ of all people should know that any number of items up in Artefact Storage could kill a person.”

“And make it look like an accident?” There’s no joke to her tone. Sasha nods, chewing her cheek. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Do you think he got that mirror from here, then?” Jon leans forward on his elbows. “What might we have had here back in the 70’s? Do we ever get rid of _anything,_ transfer it to other facilities? Have we lost anything from around the time this was recorded?”

“This place is as old as _Methuselah,_ Jon,” Sasha sighs. “There’s stuff up there from when it was first established.”

“Would you say it’s overcrowded, then, o-or does it still have room for more? Rather, does it feel like it’s _expecting_ more?” Somehow, there’s a pen in his hand. He taps it on the pile of other papers near enough to draw in front of him. “Gerry says he goes up to check every now and then, but he doesn’t say much about what he’s noticed, just… writes it down in letters he sends out to that old man.”

Now Sasha’s mouth is downset in a muted frown. “I’ve spoken to him about it. There’s only been one new delivery in since the last sweep he did.”

“What was it?”

“Uh… a table, of some kind? Some sort of design carved in, really dangerous. I’m not about to go look at it myself.” She looks at him sternly. “I don’t think you should, either.”

Jon pouts. He supposes it would be hypocritical to pry. Then again, it’s a bit strange for either of them to find themselves wary enough to keep a distance. He’s gotten to know Sasha well enough, working side by side almost nonstop since her transfer. She’s not afraid of very much, but she _does_ hate Artefact Storage.

“I won’t,” he decides. From the look he feels her give him, she can hear the inherent _yet._

He can _feel_ her _look_ at him, is the issue. Dropping the pen, he frowns at the tape recorder between them.

“Let’s go over this again.” Pushing himself back from the desk, he wheels himself over to the rolling book cart he’d taken Case #9721207 from in the first place. The verified statement folders are stored on the second shelf and held upright by a box of tapes. “What’s the total tally?”

He hears Sasha wheel her chair over to the bulletin board behind him. “Twenty-four.”

Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty… 

“I’ve only got twenty-two here, counting the one I just read.” He reaches into the box of tapes to count them, too, walking his fingertips along their edges where he’s stacked them against each other inside. “Same with the tapes.”

“Huh.” Sasha rolls back towards the desks. “Didn’t Gerry take a few into his office a while back to record them?”

“I thought he already put them back.” Frowning, Jon sits back in his chair. He swivels to face Sasha with confusion. “Maybe he was putting them back here one by one as he went?”

She shrugs, and pulls out her phone. “Might as well ask. Let’s hope they actually answer, given it’s broad daylight and all.”

Jon shuts his eyes to keep from showing that he’s rolled them. Surely, she means monster hunting can’t be done during the daytime.

While he waits for Sasha to relay a response, Jon counts the statements again. And then a third time, just to be sure. Twenty-two. Damn.

He turns around again when he hears Sasha stand up. “Any luck?”

“They’re on his desk,” she says, making her way over to Gerry’s office. Jon wheels his chair back to his desk so that he can grab his cane before he stands up.

Gerry’s office door is never actually locked when there’s at least one person left in the Archives, even when he’s asleep. It’s not uncommon for him to just leave the door wide open if he’s doing something at his desk, and for all three of the rest of them to cycle in and out if they need something from him. More common, though, is for Gerry to just sit outside at the empty fourth desk with them. He seems more at home there, with everyone else. There are times that Jon genuinely forgets the cosmetic hierarchy they’re pretending to work under.

By the time Jon gets into the office and flicks the light on himself, Sasha is moving items around on the desk. It’s messy, for all the time Gerry _doesn’t_ spend working at it, and it doesn’t take long for Sasha to step back with a folder in her hand.

“Is that one of them?” Jon asks, stepping around to stand in front of her.

“Looks like,” she says. “Case #0133112, Antonio Blake.”

She closes the folder to hand it to him when he reaches out, turning her attention to another that she picked up along with it. Jon moves towards Gerry’s desk chair to sit down and read. He spares a scathing glance at the little ceramic bowl Tim had brought in to pour the Werther’s into. The Post-It note that says “MAYBE POISON” stuck to the side does absolutely nothing to make Jon worry any less that one day, someone really will just _take_ one. And _die._

Speaking of dying, this statement is tabbed with black. The End, then. There’s a blue arrow at the top, and so Antonio Blake must have either encountered someone, or _is_ someone. There’s no indicator at the bottom about whether he’s alive and reachable, which means that Gerry must not have done any followup after whisking this into his office.

Jon is too busy reading to roll his eyes. He barely makes it past the first paragraph before his stomach goes cold. Clearing his throat doesn’t help.

“Do you think he recorded this?” 

He can’t take back the tremor to his voice, but it doesn’t appear that Sasha even heard it. She’s opened the other folder to read it standing up, her eyes flickering intently across the page. Jon shuts his mouth quickly, turning his focus to the desk to search it himself.

Nothing on the surface at first glance, so perhaps a drawer. He knows Gerry keeps a recorder in there somewhere. Maybe he left the tape loaded into it.

No luck until the third drawer down, and it isn’t a recorder he finds, but another folder. Untabbed, unmarked, but when Jon opens it up to check inside, there’s a statement tucked inside it like all the others. From 2012, judging by the case number. 

Hidden? Was this deliberate, or had it just… been there? 

Doubt flitters around in that cold rush in Jon’s stomach like an Arctic bird. Agitation could warm the space, but indecision blocks its way and keeps it frozen.

Sasha is still silent, and Jon doesn’t think he has the nerve to ask her what her opinion is yet. He doesn’t know what his own opinion is.

What he does know is that he’s not ready to read something that was written specifically to Gertrude Robinson just this past December, the paper reeking of omens. He’ll just start with Dominic Swain.

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

In late-February, Sasha almost took a statement. Almost.

The woman was slouched, clutching at herself and shaking, her long, black hair curled in unwashed snarls around her shoulders. She had seemed to sway where she stood by Rosie’s desk, rocking to the humming tune trapped inside her pale mouth. She’d looked up just long enough for Sasha to meet her eyes from across the lobby.

There was a moment, then; suspension. The starburst tile floor between them seemed to spin round and round and ringing, singing, unsound and spilling over. Sound spilling across the floor like tumbling marbles of soft glass, twinkling and whispering and beautiful. The tickle in the back of Sasha’s throat opened its wings.

The woman undid a scratching hand from her sleeve to push her hair from one side of her face, her stare wide and dark and pleading. She took a shambling step forward. Sasha stepped forward, too, ready to ask what was wrong, what did she need, who was she?

Gerry’s hand wrapped around her elbow before she even realized he was behind her, let alone upstairs at all. _I’ll take this,_ he’d said. _Stay back._

None of them turned their heads to change where they were looking. Sasha watched the woman’s eye snapped onto Gerry beside her and go dull and _confused_ before she let her hair drop into her face again. She stayed still as Gerry crossed coolly over to Rosie and talked her back into her chair, and couldn’t hear what he said to the woman in the long skirt. What Sasha remembers most is that he never reached out to touch her. Not like she might have, if she’d gotten close enough.

The woman kept her head down. Gerry kept his up, and walked alongside her down the hall to an empty room.

Only now, holding her statement, does Sasha realize that she was Jane Prentiss.

The date lines up. The feeling. Not the sound, though; that sound left down the hall with her. The one that Sasha hears now comes from somewhere else.

Tim’s voice from the doorway cuts through it.

“Well, _that_ was a bloody walk in the park.” He sweeps into the Archives with a great sigh, pulling off his jacket as he walks. Gerry steps in more quietly behind him, making no moves to shed his.

“You announce that as if we have any idea where you two even went,” Jon pipes up. Right, right. He’s been sitting at his desk right across from her for the past hour. If they talked about anything at all, Sasha doesn’t quite remember it. There must have been something.

Tim groans, dropping his jacket onto his chair. “Do we need to start writing it down on the board before we go so you two don’t forget?”

“I really don’t even think you _told_ us.”

“Honestly, Jon, this time? I think you’re better off not knowing.”

“You know saying that never works down here.”

“Point. But seriously, I don’t even know where to start this time. Did we really not tell you?”

“Gerry,” Sasha hears herself cut in. “Can I talk to you?”

Everyone goes still. Even the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead seems to stifle and hush. Gerry looks at her and stares, like he does sometimes when he thinks she isn’t looking back. Rather — like he knows when she does, and doesn’t care to stop. Like he’s looking for something, and hasn’t found it yet.

It’s Sasha’s turn, now. She hasn’t torn her eyes off him since he walked in. He doesn’t seem at all unsettled by that.

“Yeah, sure.” He tilts his head. “My office?”

“No.” Said too quickly, too coiled. “Somewhere alone, please. More alone.”

Tim straightens up from where he’d come to lean on their desks, watching her with shock and concern. His expression is almost too much, even so muted as it is. Sasha drags Jane’s folder off of her desk as she stands, sparing neither he nor Jon another glance.

“What’s going on?” she hears Tim ask under his breath as she turns the corner out into the hall after Gerry.

“I couldn’t say,” Jon whispers back, quieting with every step she takes away from the Archives. “But I have something I need to ask you about, actually.”

Gerry leads her to an empty office a few doors down. She watches the back of his head, his posture. No words while they walk.

Does he know what she’s got in her hands? Did he find what he was looking for in one of those times he’d searched her face? Does he hear it, too, or is it drowned out by his own music? He’s told them about it. Spiral Radio in his left ear, a fractal staff branded into his head that sings in colourful mathematics.

It’s not like what Jane described.

He holds the door open for her, and turns on the light. The cheap computer chair creaks when he sits down behind the empty desk. Sasha can’t bring herself to sit down across from him yet, pacing with the folder bouncing in her hands.

“You wanted to talk?” The sound of his voice somehow sends a shock through her, even knowing he would speak eventually.

“Jane Prentiss,” she says tightly. She lifts the folder up to show him its kiwi green Post-It tab and blue arrow flag. “I found her statement on your desk.”

Gerry’s expression stays neutral. “Yeah. You asked me where the statements I hadn’t recorded yet were, and I told you where to find them. What’s bothering you about hers?”

“Why didn’t you tell us it was this _bad?”_

He blinks once. Otherwise, nothing. “How bad does it seem to you?”

Sasha’s jaw creaks open and shut on nothing for a moment. She clears her throat, shakes her head. _“Bad,_ Gerry. Did you even read it?”

“Of course I read it.” His eyes narrow, like it was hurtful to suggest otherwise. “She’s in a lot of trouble.”

A bitter laugh staggers unbidden from Sasha’s mouth. “So, why aren’t we _doing_ anything?”

Gerry tips his head, his eyes still narrow and clear. “We are.”

A cold, clammy fist closes around Sasha’s windpipe from the inside. She drops her arms, stops her pacing to stare at him anew. “Oh. Okay, then— No, wait, _what_ are we doing, though? It’s been a _month,_ why didn’t you say anything?”

An aborted shrug. “I wanted to comb through it first. See if there was anything that _could_ be done before getting any of you involved.”

“Couldn’t we have found a way faster all together? I mean, _reading_ this, it feels—” Sasha looks down at the folder, tongue pressing up against the flat of her front teeth. “What actually _happened_ when she came in here?”

Why did he usher her away? Why was the statement written down, and not recorded? Why did Jane seem so _angry_ towards the end, angry at _him?_ It seemed too intensely directed to have gone unmentioned, unchecked. It doesn’t seem fair.

He stares back at her. Always staring.

“You’re taking this very personally.”

Sasha stiffens her jaw and picks up her pace again. “It just seemed negligent, is all. For a woman to come in and give a statement like this, and then we don’t even _talk_ about it.”

“No.” Gerry shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re actually this worked up about finding a statement on my desk and being curious about the followup. What’s actually the problem, Sasha?”

“The problem is that I feel like you’re _hiding something,_ _”_ she snaps. She claps a hand over her mouth, eyes big. Gerry stares.

Swallowing, she lowers her hand. “Did you make me say that?”

He finally glances down at the desk, shame flickering. “I’m sorry. Probably.” And then back up at her, gone again. “But I didn’t make you think it.”

For the first time, Sasha takes a moment to try and put words to the weight in his eyes. She doesn’t see accusation, or judgment. No mocking, no taunt, no malice.

Just recognition. But not the same kind she saw in Jane Prentiss’ face across the lobby. Not the same hope.

Sasha straightens her back.

“I’m going to need you to do that again.”

Gerry’s head straightens. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she says, no hesitation. “I don’t know if I’ll get it out otherwise.”

He nods, then. “Take it you want this on tape.”

She drops Jane’s folder onto his the desk. “That’s what we’re doing with all the statements, isn’t it? I don’t see why I would be the exception.”

Gerry stands up from the creaking chair. “I’ll go get the recorder.”

His eyes stay firmly locked on her until he passes by her to reach the door. Sasha’s hand curls around the back of one of the chairs on her side of the desk, pulling it out to finally sit. The scrape of its legs on the floor is as muffled in her ears as the sound of Gerry’s footsteps receding down the hall.

She might not get another chance to put her head in her hands and listen. Not today, not with all of them in the Archives now and watching her, paying attention to her. She would love to ask herself why she’s making such a scene about this, but she knows.

There is a tickle walking up the back of her calf. It’s not a butterfly, but it’s still something like a kiss. Sasha breathes out easier than she breathes in.

She sits up to look over her shoulder when the door opens. Gerry comes back around to the other side of the desk and places the recorder down between them. The moment he sits, he lifts his hands to gather his hair into an elastic up high on the back of his head.

“That was fast.” Sasha gives a halfhearted huff of a laugh. “Surprised those two didn’t try to hold you hostage for questioning.”

“They did,” Gerry says, tightening his ponytail. He settles his arms on the desk and looks up at her, stormless. “I just don’t care to indulge.”

Sasha isn’t sure if she should be grateful for the implication that he didn’t just throw her under the bus for the state she’s in. Maybe it’s her fault for taking the honesty policy a little too seriously. Clearly, Gerry is comfortable keeping plenty of things to himself. 

She clears her throat to break the silence, and again to dislodge the feeling still stuck to the back of it. “Are we going to start, then?”

“When you’re ready.”

She nods her chin at the recorder, shifting to sit up straighter in her chair. “Turn it on, then.”

Gerry watches her for a beat longer before reaching for the start button, and settling back in his chair.

“Third of April, 2014. This is Gerard Keay, here with Sasha James to collect her account about…”

“A long history with… things with wings, that I think matters now more than ever.”

The crawling thing on the back of her leg tucks itself just under the bend of her knee.

“When I was little, I raised butterflies. Monarchs, usually, before they were supposed to fly south. Timed it perfectly, so they’d be ready when they had to be. I had my own little patch of garden _just_ for all the milkweed I burned through to feed the caterpillars.

“Watching them take off together in this… _cloud_ of bright orange, was always a little beyond words, for me. It always made me _feel something._ Pride, awe? Something important, right in my chest.

“But the thing that always made it feel really special was the moment they’d come back. They’d cluster up against my windowsill until I opened it and let them back in. I only heard later they don’t do that. Not normally. Just for me.

“My parents thought I was imagining things at first. They didn’t study the migration patterns of butterflies the way I did. They just knew it made me happy, so they kept buying me the kit every year. They never saw them in my room whenever they dropped by. I never told them, either. I think that whenever there was a knock on the door, they would all… hide somewhere, and camouflage. So would I, by sitting up and smiling and pretending I was alone.

“I didn’t think I was being sneaky, or lying. What could be so wrong about trying to keep something safe? They’re so fragile. They don’t live very long. If they wanted to spend that time with me, then why would I throw them away?

“Everyone says they all look the same, but they don’t. I could always tell the difference in the spots and markings, a short leg, a malformed wing. That’s how I knew they weren’t just different butterflies when they turned up before the season was even over. I knew them, and they knew me, and it always made me feel… valued. Like they decided halfway across the ocean that they’d rather be with me instead, and turned around.

“But you already know this isn’t about butterflies. You know. You’ve seen them.

“The first moth I raised was an accident. I found the caterpillar outside in my garden and just assumed it would turn into a butterfly. My dad tried to help me identify it in the books I had, but we had to go to the library to find one that actually told us it was a fox moth. I endeavoured to learn all about the species to prepare for keeping it as healthy and happy as I could, because it wasn’t the same as what I was used to. Every species is different, they all have specific needs. We fed it heathers and meadowsweet and when it was finished overwintering, I set it up so it could bask in the sun. It took a month after that for him to pupate and emerge again.

“I’d never seen anything like it. When he finally broke free of his cocoon in the spring and I first saw those feathered antennae, I fell in love. It didn’t matter to me that he wasn’t shiny and powder-scaled and glittering. He was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. It really did look like fox fur.

“It occurred to me when I saw him that my brother had a habit of killing moths when they flew too close. I’d always been sensitive about it, but holding my little fox moth in my hands, I wondered how anyone could have the heart. What was their crime? Aimlessness? What was the difference between them, and a butterfly?

“No one wants to smack a butterfly, but moths are easy. The comparison is fairly simple. You don’t want to step on a rosebud, but once it’s a dandelion? No one cares. I think it says a lot about beauty and autonomy, and respect.

“How do we decide what deserves to live? Where do we draw the line between a house moth and a rosy maple? I think a lot of it is the fuzz. I think the bigger they are, the harder it is to reconcile. The harder it is to pretend it’s insignificant, and justify it.

“I get that you think I sound mental. _Who cares this much about a bunch of bugs, Sasha?_ Well, I do, so don’t look at me like that.

“I switched to moths completely. I wanted to raise one of every kind native to the climate I lived in. To keep them safe, and make sure they’d survive. Giant silk moths native to North America are usually the first things people think of when they think of rearing moths as pets, I mean — of course they are. They look a lot like butterflies. They’re gorgeous, and I didn’t want anything to do with them. They didn’t need me like the less distinctive hawk-moths, or small dusty waves.

“It became sort of a frame of reference, in my head. I compared myself to them, I mean, obviously. I don’t know many other trans people who _don’t_ identify with metamorphosis. I just identified the most with _moths._ I loved them for all sorts of reasons, and a lot of them were reasons I should have been able to love myself, too. The bushy antennae, the downy colours so many of them came in… I think as a kid realizing who I was, I felt like if I could get someone to understand why they’re so wonderful, I could get them to understand me.

“That was never something I struggled with at home. My parents were the ones who bought me those butterfly kits as a young child. My brother got into a fight once with a classmate of mine who teased me over it. He was just as unwavering a supporter of the things I loved as our parents were. It’s been a while since I’ve called him.

“I got lucky in the ‘good parents’ department. _Really_ lucky, I mean… the amount of time that Tim needed to spend sleeping on my couch in secondary school was more than enough to prove that to me. But I’d never doubted it to begin with, how much they loved me. They really, _really_ loved me. The first question they asked me when I came out to them was what my real name was.

“When they died, I completely came apart. I still had Mateo, but… Something gets torn out of you, you know? When that kind of love just disappears forever. He withdrew, too. Moved to Florida to be closer to our mum’s family. It seemed like this beautiful thing, but it wasn’t something I could do for myself. I couldn’t leave here, so I had to stay alone.

“I fell into the worst depression of my life. It was near impossible to get a hold of me, I just… stopped. I barely remember most of it. Some part of me wonders how I managed my degree, but I think even when I’m really far gone, it’s even harder to get me to stop working. I just didn’t have time for _people,_ for the family I had left.

“It was my therapist who suggested I do something for myself that my parents and I used to do together, to help me feel close to them. Something small, to comfort myself in the everyday. So, when the time was right, I set up a mercury vapor lamp outside my flat to catch whatever wild thing might come my way.

“I was lucky enough to catch a privet hawk-moth, and she left me a few eggs in a paper grocery bag overnight. I tried to set her free, of course, but she insisted upon staying. I credited the jasmine in my backyard, at the time.

“It helped. Gave me a kind of purpose for a while. Getting the habitats all set up, setting up the food plants, cleaning up after them. I had to keep the larvae separated, too. Did you know they’ll fight to the death if they meet? I had to keep them alone to save their lives, so they could keep saving mine. I don’t know what that’s even supposed to mean, but it feels like something.

“I took so many photographs I never even did anything productive with. I could have probably run a blog or something with all the documentation I had, but I just kept it all to myself. Flicked through them if I couldn’t get to sleep, to see how many life cycles it would take for me to finally feel peaceful enough to shut my eyes.

“I don’t remember when the music started. I just know it hasn’t gone away.

“Maybe it’s nothing like Jane’s. It’s nothing like yours, that’s for sure, I mean… it couldn’t be. There’s nothing branded into _my_ scalp. There’s just something at the back of my throat. Sometimes I feel it in my ears, but it’s never anything I can cough out or find with a tweezer. All in my head, I guess. I hope, anyway, because I don’t want it to be what my brain keeps suggesting.

“Sorry, distracted.

“Adult privet hawk-moths only last about five weeks. The moment they were all gone, I felt empty again. I went out to catch another wild one and start over, and wound up with a hummingbird hawk-moth.

“Hawk-moths were my favourites, to start. Their shape is very distinct, almost bullet-like, very stout. Narrow forewings, shorter hindwings. More like beetles and birds and bees than butterflies, somehow all at once. Lot of them really do look like hummingbirds. It’s almost uncanny. Maybe you should keep your eyes peeled for those the next time you’re hunting the Stranger.

“That second mother stayed until her time was up, too. For whatever reason, I still didn’t question it. She laid more eggs than the privet did, and I kept all of them. Too many to fit into the spaces I’d designated for them. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I decided to let a few of them out. It went against everything I’d ever been such a stickler about as a kid, but I trusted them. I trusted them to trust me.

“I didn’t mind letting them fly around the house. You know when you go into a butterfly house at a zoo or something because you _want_ them to land on you, and if they do, you feel… chosen? I never worried they would get lost or that I would hurt them, I always knew where they were. If they just sat nearby while I read, it was nice. And I’d hum with them, and that was fine. I could even leave the windows open, and they’d never fly out. Some would fly in, but that was fine, too.

“I know, it isn’t fine. I _knew_ it wasn’t fine, but I didn’t care. Being at home was like… a different world, you know? I don’t think about it as much here. They usually stayed there, and I didn’t hear them outside. I could have my life, I have friends. Less friends than I did before my parents, but… well, I have Tim again.

“I didn’t notice how many there were until they did start leaving a little bit. Visiting the neighbours. My landlord came knocking one day to investigate. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he looked over my shoulder at the room behind me. It didn’t occur to me that anyone could be so afraid of these things that brought me so much peace.

“They didn’t hide the way that the butterflies did when my parents came into my room to fetch me for supper. Some of them were too big to masquerade indoors, and the smaller ones were… _teeming,_ he said, so shaken and disgusted. On the ceiling, on the walls. There were a few in my hair. In my _hair,_ Gerry, and I—

“I sent them away before the exterminator could get to them. I don’t know how I did it, I just — asked. Okay, no, I didn’t _ask them,_ necessarily, but I knew I needed them to go. And they left.

“That was the first time it scared me. Seeing that it wasn’t just… this passive presence, or some spiritual nonsense. Like when my first girlfriend lost her aunt, she took me with her to a little backyard service at the house. There was this moment when the sun broke through, and a cardinal dropped down from a tree to sit on the back of a picnic chair. All her cousins just burst into tears, and everyone started hugging and laughing and talking about how it meant that there was an angel nearby.

“I think some part of me was hoping it was just something like that. Easy to believe when I only ever noticed one or two at a time. I never saw the _mass._ I don’t know why it didn’t scare me when they started slowly coming back. 

“Maybe that was why I tried to brush it off for so long. Long enough that I didn’t even realize how long it had been. I didn’t _want_ to think anything of it, but the look on the landlord’s face… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. That maybe I’m wrong, or losing myself in something unnatural. Stuck in the denial stage, maybe. Still grieving. I’d believe it, if I hadn’t read Jane’s statement today.

“Reading that… I didn’t like that I understood what she was saying. I don’t itch, not like that, but I— I already said it, the tickle. I feel things walking up my legs, and I’m fine with it. I don’t know _how_ it slipped past me that I’m not supposed to be fine with it. It sounds so obvious, actually saying it aloud, but I’ve never said it. Which… I suppose is very hypocritical of me, given everything with Tim, and Danny.

“That reminds me: I’ve been revisiting my own behaviour lately. You know, some years ago, I never would have encouraged Tim to pursue a relationship with you. Of any kind, really, much less whatever you two have going on now.

“And— And isn’t one of the things we look for when tabbing statements with the Corruption? Themes of love and connection, and family, a-and… unorthodox ways of achieving and maintaining them?

“I don’t want to say toxic. I don’t _want_ to say _unhealthy,_ not when… It isn’t you, I don’t think. I think he’s really happy since you two started seeing each other, and I support that. I just don’t know when _I_ started being so relaxed about the boundaries there, about the logistics of it, the consequences.

“It isn’t really about you two. I’m just telling you that encouragement might not have been my first response, before all this. Before my parents died, before I started keeping moths again, before they started finding me on their own. Before I started getting… desperate, I suppose. For comfort, and… and family.

“I think… I saw him going through the same thing, and my first instinct was to tell him to… It’s not the same. It’s just one relationship, it’s not bringing in this new, big family when you already _have one,_ it’s just—

“When did my focus shift? When did I pick one over the other? When do we make these decisions?

“Because it wasn’t just hawk-moths. After a while, the species of moths that ended up in my flat were ones that aren’t native to this climate, this country, this _continent._ Saturniids that shouldn’t _be_ here — there are only twelve documented species in Europe, and _sixty-eight_ in North America, forty-two of those being just above Mexico. The climates are all wrong. I’ve even found _domestic silk moths_ in my _kitchen_ before. Those are deliberately bred in Asian countries, they _landrace_ in South Africa, they _can’t fly._ They don’t just… _appear_ in places like Victoria, London.

“I don’t know _how_ they found me, or why, or how they’ve adapted to the same life cycles as the ones that are used to our weather, but that’s the other thing.

“A lot of them came to me during the winter. Fully grown adults, giant silk moths, _Atlas moths,_ flying up to my window in the dead of December. You _have_ to know how unbelievable that is.

“That stopped, though. The big ones. The pretty ones with _value._

“Maybe they were just trying to tell me something. Maybe waiting for me to shun _them_ because _my_ standards were different. Of course I found them beautiful, of course I wanted to love them, but most of all I wanted them to be home. To be safe, to live to their fullest extent even if it meant I didn’t get to see it.

“I couldn’t very well send them away, though. It was the wrong season for that, even if I found that they could _maybe_ listen to me. The best I could do was keep them comfortable for the few days or weeks they even got to be fully alive.

“And maybe they were never all those species of moth to begin with anyway, and just… took on their forms, while I was still interested in telling the differences. They don’t do that anymore, since my perspective changed. I can’t tell what they are now, or where they came from.”

Sasha reaches down to cup a hand behind her knee, and wait for the footsteps on her palm. Gently, she lifts the moth into view between them to show Gerry its plain brown wings, and quiet temperament. It’s as ambiguous as the moth named for that word, but it isn’t that. There’s a bit of flannel in it. There’s a bit of hawk.

“And I don’t think it matters.”

Gerry stares down at it, always staring, and then back up at her face. She remains just as blank as he does. The moth in her hand shies away from him.

He stops the recorder. The whir of the tape echoes in her ears even after it clicks silent. 

“Okay, so.” Gerry crosses his arms on the desk. “What are you looking for? Do you want them gone?”

Sasha curls her fingers over the moth in her hand, drawing back. “I want to know what you’re doing about Jane. How are we going to help her?”

“Sasha, she killed seven people.” He says it like he’s sorry. “Tim and I were at the hospital today, following her trail.”

Her windpipe bends like metal. “What?”

“She was admitted a few weeks ago after they found her with that wasps nest, and _she_ was the new Hive. Worms, everywhere. Six of the staff got them to the eyes, their tongues, soft tissue. Seventh broke his neck falling down the stairs trying to run.”

No euphemisms, no expressions. He’s not cautious in his retelling, or frantic either. It’s just the truth. It’s not the future Sasha wants, but the way he says it, it sounds like a possibility.

That scares her more than the way her landlord recoiled from her door.

Gerry seems to know that. Again, _again,_ he’s just watching her.

“How did you not notice?” she asks, surprising herself. “You— You see things on people, you saw why Tim was _here._ How did you miss this about me?”

“How did _you_ miss it?” Rhetorical. “I think that’s just the nature of your mark.”

Sasha nods, biting down on the inside of her cheek. “And how different is my mark from hers? How did I even _get_ it?”

Gerry shrugs, finally sighing as he looks away. “Sometimes these things just happen. We don’t always choose to be chosen. We just choose whether to give in or not.”

“So Jane gave in,” Sasha guesses. “And now she’s gone.”

Silence. It takes a moment, this time, for him to look up at her again. Sasha’s leg bounces, restless and discontented. She doesn’t want to just _sit_ here. Her eyes fall onto the kiwi green tab on Jane’s folder, the blue arrow.

Blue arrow, for a someone. She’s a _someone._ Maybe not to anyone else anymore, but Sasha only has one image of her, and the hopeful recognition in her eyes.

“I’ll just try and find her, too.” Sasha clears her throat, straightening her head. “No offense, Gerry, but I’m still not sure you really understand.”

“What don’t I understand?” His brow creases. “I heard everything you said.”

“It’s not the same, and you know it’s not.” Sasha pushes Jane’s folder across the desk towards him, nodding to the recorder. “You didn’t get around to recording this. You didn’t get to feel it. And maybe you don’t want to, maybe it’s not fair that you even _could,_ but I think it’s the best chance you have at really seeing what she’s going through.”

Gerry’s head always tips to the right. “Getting me to empathize with her doesn’t change the fact that she’s killing. That she’s going to kill more, and that even if _she_ doesn’t, the people she’s infected will. It’ll keep spreading, and it won’t stop.”

“What, so you’ll just kill _her?”_ Sasha laughs, a pain in her throat.

Gerry just looks at her.

“You want to believe she can be saved because you want to believe _you_ can be saved. And _you can_ be.” He shakes his head, eyes still stuck on her. “You’re not where she is. You’re asking for help.”

Sasha points to the folder. “So did Jane.”

Gerry shakes his head again. “Too much of her didn’t want it. I’m _telling you_ she’s too far gone. You have to let her go. The sooner the better.”

When did the moth leave her hand? Sasha clenches her fists.

“Maybe you understand a lot of this _world_ better than I ever will,” she says. “But I still don’t think you understand her.”

“Maybe I don’t,” he agrees.

Sasha shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. Gerry doesn’t put up any further argument. He’s waiting for her to ask a different question.

“Alright.” She straightens up in her seat, squaring her shoulders. “What do I have to do to avoid killing seven people, then?”

He leans back in his chair, hands laced. “You have to let _them_ go, too.”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

Gerry holds the door for her when they walk out. He’s pulling open the door to the Archives when Elias clears his throat from the bottom of the stairwell.

“Miss James,” he says, cheery as he steps over to meet them. “Mr. Delano, glad I caught you both.”

Gerry angles himself back out into the hall, stepping in front of Sasha. “And why’s that?”

Elias clasps his hands in front of him. He bends forward to peer into the Archives, and Gerry moves to pull the door shut. Tim catches it before he can and props it back open. Elias smiles past him at Jon, half-standing from his desk in the bullpen.

“I just wanted to check in on your progress with recording statements. Making sure there are no slips or missings.”

Sasha pipes up from over Gerry’s shoulder. “We’re keeping a strict count, yes.”

“Ah, yes, a solid twenty-six, correct?” Elias looks up at Tim. “Counting Miss James and Mr. Swain?”

Gerry feels Sasha go rigid behind him. He won’t give Elias the satisfaction of glancing into the room with accusation. He stays angled in front of Sasha, and Tim stays looming in the doorway.

That seems to be enough for Elias. The smile never quite leaves his face, subtle and smug and _extremely_ punchable. The thought must show on Gerry’s face, too, because it’s then that Elias takes a pointed step backwards.

“Excellent,” he says. “Keep up the good work.”

“Will do,” Gerry grinds out.

Elias spins around to make his way back towards the stairs. He doesn’t bother to pause as he calls back over his shoulder.

“And Mr. _Delano,_ you may want to say your name accurately when recording. Let’s not stand for any errors in our work.”

Gerry’s brow twitches down. Sasha’s fingers are curled tightly in his sleeve. She’s the one to push him through the doorway, and Tim is pulling him the rest of the way by his other arm.

“So, do either of you want to explain what the fuck that was about?”

Sasha is frowning at the both of them, indecision in her eyes. When he looks over to the bullpen, he sees Jon still half-risen from his seat with a balking look frozen on his face. Appropriate, given that he’s just been thrown under a bus, too.

Gerry straightens away from Tim to squint at Jon in confusion.

“…You went through my drawers?”

───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CWs: paranoia; canon-typical corruption; grief, loss, death, the works**   
>  _"moonspill" - eclipse; a group of moths is called an eclipse / spilling secrets / complete overshadowing of something obvious_
> 
> \+ surprise! it's corruption!sasha. did you notice the clues i dropped in previous chapters? heehoo.  
> \+ the statement jon was reading first was MAG 60, Observer Effect! and YES it IS relevant!  
> \+ oliver's statement case number changed because gertrude's code is the date! he gave it earlier here due to her dying a lot earlier, and thus. ~~don't mind that it's on GTCU jon's birthday. oof!~~
> 
> pleeeease comment and let me know what's on your mind!  
> [ [table of contents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637298) | [tumblr](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/) | [GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#) ]
> 
> thanks for sticking with me through the first installment! the next one is called........
> 
> ON DECK: **NO END IN SIGHT**  
>  i.e., tim is suspicious of elias. there's really only one person that can tell them what to do next.


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